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The politics of graduate internships

Edward Prichard

June 2018

Despite the best efforts of campaigners and periodic government attention, unpaid internships are still a problem

Intern pay

Graduate internships are having something of a moment in the sun. Popular with graduates, employers and universities alike, they enable young, unproven workers to gain experience and knowledge of the world of work through a short-term contract. This can be beneficial to all parties, as graduates get the work experience they lack, universities' employment outcomes increase, and employers can bring youthful talent into their company for a relatively low cost and risk. This is something I have discussed previously on Luminate in my Benefits of hiring graduate interns article.

However, there is ongoing concern that many companies are not paying their interns a wage - let alone a fair one. Many openly advertise this fact in their vacancy adverts. There are a number of given reasons for this, including:

  • a lack of legal clarity around the National Minimum Wage legislation1
  • pure selfishness from employers
  • a lack of government action
  • a saturated graduate jobs market, leading to desperate graduates willing to work for free.

Intern pay has been an issue since the emergence of internships in the UK jobs market during the Great Recession. The pressure group Intern Aware came forward to champion interns' rights in the UK, joining the worldwide focused Global Intern Coalition who have organised acts of protest and education such as the #GlobalInternStrike and the documentary An Unpaid Act.2 There have also been countless column inches written about the issue in the press, with everyone from the Guardian to the Spectator weighing in.3 The Daily Telegraph has a whole section of their website dedicated to it.4

Graduate Talent Pool (GTP) was set up by the government in 2009 in response to an anticipated rise in graduate unemployment in the wake of the recession, and Prospects has run the service since its inception. Our brief was not only to provide a graduate internship jobs board, but to promote the benefits of internships to employers, careers services and graduates.

Under pressure from - and then in partnership with - Intern Aware, we have expanded our role to include campaigning against unpaid internships, banning them from the site and setting an example that others have followed. Our policy is that an intern should be paid the National Minimum Wage (NMW) as a legal minimum.

Government policy

There are Conservative representatives in both Houses actively campaigning for a ban on unpaid internships. Both Lord Holmes and Alec Shelbrooke MP have raised private members bills in recent years. In the days before Mr Shelbrooke’s bill came before Parliament in the Autumn of 2016, Damien Hinds, then Work and Pensions Minister, said that the government was considering banning unpaid internships.5 However, just five days later the bill was 'talked out' by opponents of the bill in the Commons.6

A frustrating defeat, but the cause wasn't lost. In early 2017, the All Party Parliamentary Group on Social Mobility and the Sutton Trust recommended the banning of unpaid internships, which led to both Labour and the Green party including such a commitment in their 2017 election manifestos.7

A month after Theresa May formed her minority government, Matthew Taylor's much anticipated Review of Modern Working Practices called for a clarification of the law and an increase in enforcement behaviour from HMRC, but not for a ban.8

Nearly a year later, in February 2018, we have seen a crackdown in enforcement from HMRC with more than 550 companies warned over their internship practices, and an enforcement team set up to confront repeat offenders.9 We have also seen some success in Parliament with Lord Holmes' private members Unpaid Work Experience (Prohibition) bill, calling for the prohibition of unpaid work experience exceeding four weeks, being passed through the Lords in April 2018. It is due to for its second reading in the Commons in November 2018.

So where are we now?

With so much political attention fixed on Brexit and other big ticket issues, unpaid internships seemed to have slipped from the agenda. However, with a Commons vote approaching at the end of the year, and apparent cross-party support for the issue, all hope is not lost.

Notes

  1. £7.38 for 21-24 year olds, £7.83 for 25+ year olds. Source: GOV.UK. (2018). The National Minimum Wage and Living Wage: Who gets the minimum wage, accessed 1 May 2018.
  2. The Global Intern Strike took place 20 February 2017 and the action can be followed via the hashtag #GlobalInternStrike. See the trailer for the documentary An Unpaid Act, and any updates can be found on their Facebook page.
  3. MPs shouldn't exploit young people like me with unpaid internships, The Guardian, 2017; Why interns don’t deserve pay, The Spectator, 2013.
  4. Internships, The Telegraph, 2018.
  5. Unpaid internships could be banned, BBC, 2016.
  6. Tories failing to deal with unpaid internships, say campaigners, The Guardian, 2016.
  7. APPG and Sutton Trust (2017), ‘The class ceiling: Increasing access to the leading professions’, All Party Parliamentary Group on Social Mobility, Westminster, UK; Labour pledges to end zero-hours contracts and unpaid internships in 20-point plan to tackle 'rigged economy', Independent, 2017; Green Party accuses Conservatives of 'waging war' on young people, Independent, 2017.
  8. Good Work: The Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices, Matthew Taylor, 2017.
  9. Initiative to crack down on unpaid internships launched in UK, The Guardian, 2018.

Written by

Photo: Edward Prichard
Edward Prichard
HE services executive
Prospects

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