…YET INSISTS IT IS “COMMITTED TO CHALLENGING INEQUALITY IN EVERYDAY LIFE IN THE UK”
The British Institute of Human Rights has advertised for four interns to work for up to four days a week for at least three months, paid only £5 a day. This is while maintaining that the organisation is “committed to challenging inequality and social justice in everyday life in the UK.”
The positions on offer are: Programmes Intern, Policy intern, Communications and Website Intern and Director’s Intern. All require substantial skills and experience – yet pay only £5 travel and lunch expenses per day (as long as they bring their receipts). Applicants must commit to working two to four days a week, depending on the role, and interns must commit to working for “at least three months”.
We have also found evidence of other internships at the BIHR, including a Director’s Intern (which looks like a PA job to us), Legal Policy Research intern (who will need a “legal background to research human rights case law”) and a Communication and Website intern (which looks like a straightforward digital marketing position to us). See for yourself – we’ve pasted the adverts below. Their site also says there are only seven salaried employees at the organisation – which by our calculations means there are as many unpaid interns working there as there are paid members of staff.
Astonishingly, the irony of recruiting for unpaid, young staff members while maintaining you are a force for social good seems to be lost on the BIHR, whose website proclaims:
Vision, Mission and Beliefs
Introduction
At a minimum, human rights are a safety net for all of us — at home, at school, at work, in the places in which we have friendships and networks and in society as a whole. They can help guard against excessive state power or in some cases against individuals exercising inappropriate control over our lives and failing to treat us respectfully, be mindful of our dignity, or give us a ‘fair deal’. But they are also a set of guiding principles which can help us go beyond the minimum standards of decency and create a fairer, more tolerant society in which everyone has an equal chance to flourish as human beings, and play a full part in making decisions about and contributing towards their community.Our vision:
We want a society that has become stronger because all human beings are equally valued, can participate fully and are treated with fairness, dignity and respect.Our mission:
To bring human rights to life by producing and shaping human rights tools, public policy and practices that empower people to improve their own lives and the lives of others.Our beliefs:
– As human beings we are all born with human rights.
– The whole of society will be stronger if we are empowered to realise our own human rights and able to defend those of others.
– Human rights are a set of important principles that can be used in practical ways to create a fairer more decent society.
– The value of human rights for individuals and society will only be fully realised if they are embraced as a full set of interdependent rights, spanning civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights.We strive to put our beliefs into practice through our operating principles.
Really? Because it looks to us like you’re trying to get something for nothing…
By law, charities are currently allowed to have as many unpaid interns as they wish – thanks to a loophole in the minimum wage law that was designed to protect the practice of genuine volunteering (so your local soup kitchen wouldn’t have to pay you for helping out for two hours’ a week, for example). But there is growing anger and frustration that too many charities are now brazenly taking advantage of this to secure unlimited free admin support. But Graduate Fog – and many of our readers – believe that these positions exploit those who take these internships (which are often full-time and last up to six months). Worse still, they exclude those young people who can’t afford to work for free from the chance to gain vital experience they now need to even be considered for paid jobs in the charity world.
Graduate Fog has already exposed several large, well-respected charities like Oxfam, the National Trust and Comic Relief for failing to pay their interns a decent wage for their work. We have also reported on multimillionaire businessmen like Tony Blair and James Caan who have advertised for interns to work at their charitable organisation for free – as well as organisations like the Centre for Social Justice (which offered an 11-month unpaid internship!). Yes, they are legally allowed to do this (for now – Labour MP Hazel Blears wants to change that). But exploiting this loophole is so clearly just plain wrong. Morally wrong. Wouldn’t you expect people who spend their time campaigning for human rights to realise that? We have invited the BIHR to explain below how they think these four internships are fair. Let’s see how they respond…
Want to know what happens next? Follow us on Twitter @GraduateFog or Friend us on Facebook!
*SHOULD CHARITIES PAY THEIR INTERNS A FAIR WAGE FOR THEIR WORK?
Even if it’s legal for charitable organisations like the British Institute of Human Rights to use unpaid interns, are you surprised they don’t feel any guilt about it being morally wrong? Should the law be changed so that charities are no longer exempt from having to pay all their staff at least the minimum wage?
Here are the adverts:
BIHR Communications and website intern
This is a slightly more difficult set of circumstances – certainly nowhere near as clear cut as the issues we normally agree on.
Given that charities represent causes which people genuinely feel strongly about, one could imagine that people would genuinely be “volunteers”. I’ve never encountered anyone who is a volunteer in the traditional understand of the word, working within the private sector.
Twee clichés like “I’m passionate about retail” when trying to get an unpaid internship with Arcadia are very different to potentially genuine sentiments like “I’m passionate about human rights”.
Certainly, I’ve volunteered in the charity sector and never felt hard done by. On the other hand, I was the one who approached them, and there were no expectations of me similar to that of a job (available for 2-3 days for minimum 3 months).
These particular listings do look like they are more than “volunteering”, and this is a job in all but name.
In short – I agree on this occasion that it reeks of hypocrisy, but would be wary to condemn any and all charity volunteering positions.
The jobs have been removed. Is this because of public pressure? Any updates appreciated.
No internships in the UK should be unpaid whether it is in the private, public or charity sector. Also rich governmental organisations like the UN etc should pay for all their internships too, they certainly have money enough.
I have tried for 7 years to get into the charity sector, my undergraduate and post graduate diploma was solely targeted on the academic background my field is interested in. I have good grades and my work experience from the private sector is solid with good jobs giving good skills. However I can not even get an interview despite having answered the application forms according to the “star approach” and had it checked by others. WHY?
Because I can’t afford to get an internship and work for free for a year or more.
The only students from my year which I know are working for charities now are 5 very rich students who could afford to work for free for a year and 1 student who knew all the right people.
I work in a good job in the private sector so again I know my education, skills and applications is not the problem here. I am not bitter but I am sad that all the doors to my dream career are closed just because I am not rich.
Gareth above seem to be mixing up internships with volunteering, they are two separate things. Volunteering for free is fine, unpaid internships is not. But even worse in the above article is that the positions don’t even look like internships but rather proper jobs which should be filled permanently and not by internships to save money by playing the system.
“Gareth above seem to be mixing up internships with volunteering”
I thought I made clear distinction that this has gone beyond the realm of ‘volunteering’ (which should come with no binding obligations or job description) and into the realm of internships/jobs; the difference between any of these things being a litle fuzzy at times. For example, whilst I was involved only in a voluntary and fairly light-touch capacity, I was still described as an “intern” – a term which will mean something very different to, say, an Investment Bank.
“Volunteering for free is fine, unpaid internships is not.”
Agreed. The distinction, as I said, being job-like obligations e.g. one must be available a set number of days per week, perform specific tasks, and agree to be engaged for a minimum period (in this case 3 months).
“But even worse in the above article is that the positions don’t even look like internships but rather proper jobs which should be filled permanently and not by internships to save money by playing the system.”
Indeed. Both the tone and content of the advert strongly indicates that these are “jobs” in all but name.
I work for a charity now but it took me a long time to get that job – I volunteered part-time but I couldn’t possibly have committed to an unpaid internship. I was on JSA, I needed to spend a large proportion of the week looking for work.
It’s completely ridiculous that they were advertising these internships – have they never heard the word ‘irony’?
Gareth it was your;
“Given that charities represent causes which people genuinely feel strongly about, one could imagine that people would genuinely be “volunteers”. I’ve never encountered anyone who is a volunteer in the traditional understand of the word, working within the private sector.”
together with your;
“These particular listings do look like they are more than “volunteering”, and this is a job in all but name.”
That made your first comment a bit unclear to me, but yes I now see we are sort of saying the same thing but in different ways.
The distinction between volunteering and internships is quite clear to me. An internship is solely for the purpose of giving the intern solid skills and experience to work in that sector in the future, also there are a certain amount of hours required a week for a set amount of months with as you say specific tasks.
Volunteering is unpaid, no set tasks and no set hours and no one expects a job to come out of it. Volunteering is done in addition to your current job, studies, retirement etc not instead of.
No internships should be used by any company or organisation to fulfill a position which they always require someone to carry out. Basically if the company can’t cope without having an intern doing these tasks for even a week then it is a job and not an internship. If an intern is sick or if they are in between interns the employees workload should not increase (the same rules can apply to job seeker allowance schemes). Although here volunteering can overlap on the proper job bit as some organisations could not exist without a huge base of volunteers, soup kitchens, gap year charities.
You’ve got to laugh when even unpaid internships are demanding experience. How are people meant to get started in a career?
The distinction between volunteering and internships is quite clear to me.
I agree, Gareth your first post wasn’t as clear as it could have been.
The person who wrote this clearly has no idea about the organization they are working for. I was a programmes intern at and it’s incredibly unfair of you to tar them with the same brush as slave-driving, profit-driven, private sector businesses. I was there for 2 days a week whilst I was still studying at university, although if I needed time off it was never a problem, plus as I travelled from Brighton they were fine with me only being from around 10.30-11.00 until 5, or I could leave early if I had somewhere to be. They paid my travel expenses from Brighton and lunch expenses. The interns there did valuable work as they wanted it to be worthwhile for us and I never made the coffee as the full-time staff normally supplied us with coffee and cake as they appreciated our help! Everyone there was really nice and it was a very pleasant environment to be in.
I completely appreciate the reasoning behind this article as it is very difficult to find meaningful employment in the charity sector unless you’re a rich kid in London who can do unpaid internships to gain experience. But BIHR is a very small organization on a budget providing vital service. Surely there is a disparity between profit making corporations using interns and a small NGO?
Charities are here to make a buck like any other organizations in the capitalist economy. Wake up. Charity begins at home.
Volunteering is a vital part of what charities are all about. Interns have been exploited in the private sector but that’s totally different and I can’t understand why people want to stop charities having interns. I worked for a charity that was founded upon the principles of volunteering and through volunteers we ran services that were vital for people’s lives that we couldn’t have run if we had to pay interns. People volunteer for different reasons, interns gain skills quickly and as a result can give more to an organisation, they are close to the level of a staff member, in return they become much more employable. In the end the charity I worked for stopped taking on interns (because of the kind of pressure from articles like this) and some of the projects that helped the life’s of vulnerable people ended. I worked with some fantastic interns that all went straight into jobs and they got a lot out of what they did, they all worked part time jobs often working during the week and weekends. They weren’t spoilt rich kids, they were passionate and dedicated individuals. It’s sad that the opportunities where I worked and at bihr are no more.