SUPERMARKET MAN WAS “EXTREMELY GRATEFUL” FOR HIS “INVALUABLE” INTERNSHIPS WHEN STARTING HIS CAREER
*GRADUATE FOG EXCLUSIVE*
The man who has been speaking on behalf of Tesco during the recent row about unpaid placements as part of the government’s workfare scheme has himself worked as an unpaid intern – and told Graduate Fog he sees nothing wrong with young people working for free for up to six months in order to gain experience.
Back in 2010, Graduate Fog’s path crossed with that of David Nieberg – the supermarket’s media relations manager – over a vacancy for an unpaid “editorial intern” being advertised at Tesco magazine. The internship lasted “3-6 months” and the role was “not salaried, but we will pay basic expenses”. It involved “…providing administrative and organisational support for the editorial desk, along with the chance to learn and develop basic journalism skills including researching, fact checking and writing news and feature content.”
The magazine’s production was (and still is) outsourced to contract publisher Cedar, but we believed that Tesco should take some responsibility as the publication carries their brand. A number of emails were exchanged, during which Graduate Fog remarked that it was unusual to see such a big brand recruiting so brazenly, as unpaid internships were something of a “guilty secret” at the time.
But Nieberg seemed unable to understand why anybody might have a problem with unpaid internships, saying:
“Can I ask what your issue is with advertising an internship on a magazine? I have seen many such adverts with national newspapers, such as The Guardian, advertising for internships.
I worked for many years as a journalist and work experience/internships are an invaluable way of gaining experience in an industry that is very difficult to get a foothold in. I personally worked on this basis for two national newspapers and was extremely grateful for the opportunity.
When I was doing my NCTJ training as a journalist, an unpaid internship on a newspaper was compulsory as part of your training.
How do you arrive at the conclusion that experience on a magazine, helping someone at the start of their career build up contacts and a portfolio, is a guilty secret?”
And there have been other instances of Tesco being involved with unpaid internships. In October 2011, we reported that the supermarket was forced to remove adverts for 145 “shelf stacker interns” in Ireland. Tesco had promoted the positions as part of the Irish government’s controversial Jobbridge internship scheme, which allowed private companies to promote lengthy, full-time internships paying only 50 Euros (£42) per week.
The advertisement caused outcry in Ireland among young people, although the story received little attention in the mainstream press as Tesco is such a powerful advertiser. The advert was later removed, following pressure from several workers’ unions.
Here is some text from one of the ads, for an internship lasting six months:
“The intern will gain practical experience in retail excellence in an exciting and fast moving environment. The role is to help our customers get what they want by filling shelves according to merchandising plans and ensuring that Customers do not have to queue.
“The intern will gain skills such as stock rotation, customer service skills, management of waste and damages and merchandising to plans routines. The intern will receive a full induction, Department specific training and Tesco Options training.”
Clearly, the views of Tesco’s spokesperson are not the views of Tesco. But Nieberg’s casual disregard for unpaid workers back in 2010 still makes us feel uneasy today. Likewise, the fact that Tesco has been involved with government-backed unpaid work schemes before (in Ireland) is cause for concern. Is it possible that Tesco – like the government – doesn’t really understand why forced unpaid labour is so repulsive to the British public? Are they just paying lip service, because this story threatens their reputation – and their bottom line?
*DOES TESCO SEIZE ANY OPPORTUNITY IT GETS TO GAIN FREE LABOUR?
Do you believe that Tesco truly understands why the public is so disgusted by its conduct – or is it just worried about the impact of bad publicity? Does the supermarket’s use of unpaid workers make you less likely to shop there in the future?
Unfortunately, working unpaid for a significant amount of time does seem to be a requisite of gaining a job in journalism. That doesn’t mean it’s a good thing! It almost certainly puts up barriers to people who aren’t able to support themselves financially and, in my opinion, means we have a certain lack of diversity in our news and media today.
I suppose he could be arguing that people on JSA should welcome the opportunity to gain experience working on a magazine while claiming benefits – perhaps, but there are several problems with this. 1) We’re seeing a subtle shift from “work experience” to “unpaid work” – this vacancy in particular may have been the former, however most positions pushed by the current workfare scheme are almost certainly the latter. 2) Should a JSA claimant take it upon themselves to seek out voluntary work on a magazine or newspaper while claiming benefits, they could see themselves taken out of their placement and put on the checkout in Poundland instead, thanks to workfare (which is what happened to Cait Reilly). 3) There’s a noticeable difference between gaining voluntary work experience in a career-focused environment and completing a forced unpaid work placement which has no relevance to your choice of career and no guarantee of paid work at the end of it.
Basically, he’s comparing two scenarios which are completely different. The government needs to wise up to this and create a better system.
Perhaps a psychiatrist should question whether any Stockholm Syndrome Worker should even consider themselves to be qualified to be promoted to any position of authority based on the “Peters Principle” (ie within any single organisation, at least one person will be promoted on the basis of their incompetence)…. David Nieberg a case in point.
There’s a big difference between an editorial internship and stacking shelves. They can fluff it up all they like with ‘invaluable customer service skills’ bullsh*t – it’s a shelf-stacking job. Maybe they should get a monkey to do it if they don’t like things like Minimum Wage laws.
@all
I agree – i just don’t see why it’s so hard to tell the difference between work experience and unpaid work. Tell us what’s involved and let the min wage law decide!
@all
I believe there should be something called ‘placement grant’ which would be part of student loan. It will be optional to apply and only graduates looking for work experience / unpaid internship would be able to apply for it once. It will be only for 4-6 weeks and the interns/workers should also be paid expenses and lunch by the company.
Thinking an average student now accumulate around £25K at the end of their degree what’s another £1000 in grand scheme of things.
Everyone happy.
@Sam
But isnt’ that just another way of getting young people to get into further debt by working for free? For me it’s clear that the only people who should be paying for the labour of workers that they gain from is the employers. Not the taxpayer, not universities, and certainly not the workers / interns themselves.
I also think your idea – while creative! – woudln’t work, because nowadays people need more than 4-6 weeks of unpaid work to be considered for paid jobs. If you extended this to the loan covered 6-8 weeks that wouldn’t help either… because the more interns work for free, the further away the goalposts move! One of the most horrific ironies of all this is that this system of unpaid internships has only flourished because interns have done these internships in the belief that they would lead to paid work… But all that’s happened is that the next lot of grads just has to do even longer internships (or more of them) before they’ll be considered for paid jobs! The goalposts keep moving further away…
It does make me a little mad the people who do these internships. It is just the wealthy perpetuating the system to better themselves or from what I see, mostly ripping off middle class students who stretch their parent’s pockets to do these things. I do wonder what would happen if people took a stand and stopped doing them! What if the interns all decided to strike for the day? An interesting thought – also goes back to the fact, who do they have to represent them?
Getting students into further debt is also definitely not the answer! It might be ‘another grand’ to you, but not to the rest of us! Exactly the same argument by the person who wanted to set up the company where you could pay to get work experience. No thanks!
Of course interns should get paid for work they undertake while working for a newspaper or book publisher.At one time newspapers offered a number of trainee schemes which were paid at decent rates.They don’t now because they don’t have to. They know full well that most interns that apply for posts are quite willing to do the same work that trainees did twenty years ago and be content with the ‘ experience’ offered.
This is sheer, naked exploitation of talented people who have proved themselves on student newspapers or as freelancers, but who are treated like slaves as interns on nationals because journalism is seen as glamorous.
It’s time that newspapers who flout the internship regulations, like the Guardian, for instance, were taken to law and hit where it hurts most—in the pocket.