BACK PAY IS OFTEN AWARDED, BUT PENALTIES ARE VERY RARE
Three media interns are celebrating as their former employer has been fined nearly £9,000 after the trio of designers worked for three months unpaid. The penalty is one of the largest Graduate Fog has ever heard of, and comes on top of a previous court order for the employer (an executive coaching firm) to pay the interns £5,000 to cover the wages they were owed.
Unfortunately, this was not a UK case – it happened in Australia – and Graduate Fog feels these interns’ fantastic success highlights the woeful inadequacies of our own reporting and penalty system for unpaid and low-paid internships. Here’s a reminder of the pitiful results of the UK’s pathetic system for gaining justice for interns:
NO FINES In multiple cases, employers have been ordered to award back pay to former interns – but still none has ever been fined for paying interns less than the UK National Minimum Wage. In other words, exploiters have only had to fork out what they should have paid their staff in the first place. Hardly a deterrent, is it?
NO PROSECUTIONS Nobody in the UK has ever been prosecuted for having unpaid interns, despite this being a clear breach of the National Minimum Wage law. (Er, what is the point of having a law if no-one is ever prosecuted for breaking it?)
SLOW PROCESSES Growing anecdotal evidence suggests our Pay and Work Rights Helpline moves at a glacial pace, with interns waiting months for news about the progress of their case. One former intern we know of has been waiting for two YEARS for a resolution (yes, really)
BAD ADVICE Even more worryingly, Graduate Fog understands that many interns are being fobbed off with poor advice telling them their claim isn’t strong enough, when really it is. Are good cases being dropped for no reason?
NO TRANSPARENCY In the latest list of minimum wage cheats published by the Department of Business earlier this month, we saw no sign of any cases involving interns. Weren’t there any complaints from interns during that period? If there were, why weren’t their cases successful? We simply don’t know – the department says it does not keep data on claimants who call themselves ‘interns’.
So, what can we learn from the Australian system? For starters, we like the sound of their “Fair Work ombudsman” – a named official who investigates complaints and advises on fines (as opposed to the UK’s faceless helpline, where interns never speak to the same person twice).
Intern hero: Australia’s Fair Work Ombudsman Natalie James
After the judge’s ruling in the three media interns’ case, the Fair Work ombudsman, Natalie James (an actual, real person who even has her own Twitter account!), warned that the court’s decision should be noted by employers considering unpaid work schemes as a source of free labour, saying:
“The Fair Work ombudsman is committed to protecting vulnerable young workers as they enter the workforce and will take action in cases of serious non-compliance.”
Natalie, we like the sound of you. Graduate Fog knows from our friends at Interns Australia that unpaid internships are a big problem Down Under, and we’re not suggesting their officials have this problem sorted. However, we do feel that for a penalty system to stand a chance of working, it must have ‘teeth’ – which means at least occasional big fines and proper prosecutions. Any country that is serious about clamping down on the problem of unpaid work needs a system that stands up to those who break the law.
* DOES THE UK NEED TOUGHER PENALTIES FOR INTERN EXPLOITERS?
Does the UK’s reporting system let down interns? Do you like the sound of Australia’s ‘Fair Work ombudsman’? What changes need to be made to the UK system increase the number of interns coming forward, and boost back pay awards, fines and prosecutions against employers who cheat interns out of the wages they are owed?
Unless candidates start to assert themselves, and treat employers with caution, employers will always take the proverbial, and try to redesignate jobs as a) internships, b) apprenticeships, c) pre-employment training for no other reason than to avoid paying, not only the National Minimum Wage, but also tax and national insurance. Worse, the employer may even work with Job Centre Plus as an attempt to recruit candidates for “4 Week Work Experience” placements.
A peculiar reaction from a business ethicist: http://www.ethics.org.au/On-Ethics/blog/February-2016/Despite-the-Bad-Press,-Ethical-Internships-are-Pos
I think she’s trying to defend unpaid internships in the context of courses of study, but it’s hard to tell when you have pullquotes like ‘The assumption that all meaningful work must be paid for may not be the right starting position’.
The various job aggregator websites I visit everyday have become saturated with intern and voluntary ‘opportunities’. I don’t think these will lead to any substantial offer of employment for most of the people taking them up, but are nevertheless dangled in front of those with little experience as being their ‘golden ticket’ for meaningful long-term employment.
However, with a work-for-free-hope-for-a-job narrative such schemes can quickly turn into a self fulfilling prophecy. Eventually it can become expected and anyone not wealthy enough to take part will find themselves marginalised and underemployed. It is therefore another attempt to errode pay and conditions at the bottom end of the jobs market and should kept in check.
Journalism in particular seems like it is trying to run an industry on voluntary contributions, as though work is a hobby for most people and not a way of supporting themselves financially.