Remodeling: While the government rarely sticks its fingers into employer training programs (except for things like OSHA-required safety training), internship programs are a whole different kettle of fish. In fact, as a result of some recent guidelines published by the U.S. Department of Labor, a lot of what were previously considered acceptable internship programs are now flat-out illegal.
7 comments:
This article is great for me, and many others in the school, because many of us have been or will be unpaid interns. This past summer, I was an unpaid intern at PICT Classic Theatre, although it was a great experience and learned a lot, these regulations were not yet in place. What I'm wondering is if this would have changed my experience there. Would I have less impromptu training that helped more learn about the theater? I like for the field we are in these new rules pose something interesting. Although not difficult to abide and definitely useful for the intern, I'm not quite sure if it needs to be quite this structured.
This is great but I doubt it will change much in the theater world. I have worked a couple internships that I know now were definitely not up to snuff. It was frustrating at the time but not worth pursuing legal action. If I did though my biggest reason would be to prevent it from happening to others. I don't want to name names but I worked for one company that I know is still doing this. They broke more then a few rules (A lot of which pertain to OSHA) but this was one of them. From what I hear they have not changed anything, and I hope their "interns" know stuff like this, because if no one brings it up they will continue to get away with it regardless of new laws.
Knowing how you should be treated as an unpaid intern is valuable information for students like us who will most likely being working as one over the next few years. I know I really shouldn't be so surprised that these rules were not always in place but I am. It surprises me that places that were treating their interns worse then this were continuing to get interns at all. When you go into an internship you are hoping to come out of it more skilled in that profession then you were before and if the only jobs you were assigned were making copies or getting coffee you are not really getting anything out of it. I am happy that these are in place now and that in the future we can get internships that will be beneficial to our futures.
This is what concerns me about internships. I've always wanted to experience the community of a business and see what they are like through internships, but I was always worried that this would happen. I always felt that I would be placed in a business and they be their pet or slave and do all the dirty work. Almost as if I was a custodian for free. However, I'm glad to see this article shows that these kind of internships are starting to be illegal. I mean the definition of an internship is a temporary position with an emphasis on on-the-job training rather than merely employment, and it can be paid or unpaid. It's not a Gofer. Yet i feel like businesses find away around this so they can still have Gofers at interns without getting caught.
Well this is good. As a student currently poking around for internships, it is a relief to know that I'm not going to fall into a gofer trap in which I'll be fetching coffee and sweeping floors for the summer. Don't get me wrong, I'm fine with fetching coffee and sweeping floors (I've been an ASM), I just want to get an educational experience out of it as well. I like the part that says interns are only to take up space in a professional's shadow. Of course we'll be able to do things within that shadow, but it keeps us from being a separate intern island.
Thank god for this article. It's about time that stipulations like these were passed. As someone in an industry that is heavily into interns, I'm relieved to know that I won't be used as menial labor. Yesterday in Stagecraft we talked about us as sophomores being "labor" and whether that is beneficial to our education. Yes, you can learn from being a go-fer. However, that shouldn't be the base of your time as an intern/labor. For instance, sorting hardware is something that needs to be done, but if that's the only thing you're being assigned to do, it's hard to learn from that alone. Personally, I don't think that interns should be unpaid, especially in a time like today when prices of everything are skyrocketing. Not many people I know have the means to be a full-time unpaid intern. A stipend helps.
I love that the DOL is cracking down on the definition of "internship" and holding employers accountable, but I have to wonder how much this will conceivably help. If I'm a college freshman looking for an internship, and my employer tells me "of course this is ok," am I really going to risk any perceived or actual blacklisting that could affect my ability to get an internship or job in the future? The DOL can't be everywhere, and unless they're trolling the internet looking for job descriptions, they're going to rely on interns themselves speaking out. It's great that this has been happening, but in an industry as small as ours, the fear of retaliation isn't unfounded. As a general rule, I don't apply to unpaid internships, primarily because I can't afford to, but also because I want to be learning while I provide benefit to a workplace, which precludes most of what the DOL considers acceptable internships. In fact, with that particular stipulation in place, I wonder whether most theater internships count at all?
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