The Truth about Internships

Many politicians from across the political spectrum are starting to highlight internships as a reasonably good solution to the problem of youth unemployment.  After-all they help businesses by giving them an extra pair of hands and they help young people gain some much needed experience and show a ‘can-do’ attitude to other potential employers. So while everyone might prefer full-time, paid, permanent employment, internships are increasingly being seen as a valid starting point in a young person’s career, particularly young graduates.

Behind all of this thinking, there is a general assumption that if you employ someone and call them an ‘intern’ you don’t have to pay them and you can ask them to do pretty much whatever you want. Many interns end up working long hours and taking on a significant amount of responsibility, despite receiving little more than travel expenses and in many cases no remuneration at all.

But this assumption is simply untrue.

There is no reason to believe that minimum wage legislation does not apply to interns. If an intern is carrying out work of value for the employer, the likelihood is they should be being paid. Basically an unpaid internship is legitimate only if it involves shadowing and other such learning activities, the minute it begins to look like a job within the organisation employment rights kick in – even if the intern has signed a contract saying they will accept only expenses.  

Today the National Union of Journalists won a case which illustrates this precise point.   

The NUJ and Thompson’s Lawyers supported the case of Keri Hudson, 21, who had worked as an unpaid intern at the My Village Website in late 2010.

The tribunal heard that she had worked each day from 10am – 6pm and had personally been responsible for, and in charge of, a team of writers, training and delegating tasks, collecting briefs, scheduling articles and even hiring new interns. Despite this the company had told her she was not eligible for any pay because they considered her an intern.

In her evidence Keri Hudson said she had been asked when the site was taken over by TPG Web Publishing Ltd if she would stay on and work for the new company. She was assured her pay would be fixed. After 5 more weeks she was informed she would not now be receiving a payment for the work she carried out – she resigned and took out a grievance.

The tribunal found she was a worker in law even though she didn’t have a written contract and was therefore entitled to be paid at least the National Minimum Wage and holiday pay.

This case shows that interns have rights and employers should not simply assume that they don’t.

This is not the first case of its kind and unions across the UK have been challenging the use of unpaid interns for a number of years now. Despite this there is a general misunderstanding about the law and how it applies to interns on the part of employers and interns are often unaware of their rights at work.

For more information on the rights of interns see the TUC’s dedicated website www.rightsforinterns.org.uk

Helen Martin- STUC  

Small change, big difference

With youth unemployment at 17.9% and demand for Modern Apprenticeships outstripping supply (BT recently had approximately 24,000 applications for 221 Modern Apprenticeships), it is essential that public resources are effectively increasing the number of Modern Apprenticeships available.

Experience has proved that long-term youth unemployment severely damages the life chances of thousands of young people and undermines the social fabric of our society. Youth unemployment has long-term and enduring social consequences for our society.

The STUC believes that direct public investment in youth job creation and enhanced training and learning opportunities for young people is essential to tackle the scourge of youth unemployment.

Evidence confirms that ‘Modern Apprenticeships’ are a powerful method of providing Scotland’s young people with high-quality training which leads to industry recognised qualifications and meaningful employment. Public procurement can be a powerful tool in tackling youth unemployment by ensuring that contractors provide training through Modern Apprenticeships that will equip young people with the skills to good long term employment.

Catherine McKinnell, Newcastle North MP, has introduced the ‘Small Change, Big Difference’ Bill at Westminster. This Bill aims to ensure that public procurement processes are utilised to create more Modern Apprenticeship jobs within the private sector. The Bill receives its second reading on Friday, 11^th February.

Catherine McKinnell has also submitted an Early Day Motion at Westminster on ‘Apprenticeships and Skills Training’, which has been signed by 87 MPs so far, 17 of which are Scottish MPs. It supports the assertion that public procurement processes can and should have a positive impact on the employment prospects of those seeking to undertake a Modern Apprenticeship.

Increasing opportunities for Modern Apprenticeship jobs is an essential part of the work of many trade unionists, and it is vital that we continue to build on this.

A section of the Scottish Union Learning website has been developed to provide further information on Modern Apprenticeships in Scotland.  This can be accessed at www.scottishunionlearning.com/apprenticeships.

Tommy Breslin- Scottish Union Learning

Unions contributing to the development of the Modern Apprenticeship Project

Scottish Union Learning has launched a Modern Apprenticeship Project aimed at increasing union capacity within Scotland’s Modern Apprenticeship programme. Modern Apprenticeships can offer positive access to employment for young people and the opportunity for mature workers to change or re-engage in their chosen career path.

Unemployment for those aged 18-24 years old was 17.9% for Scotland in the three month period Sep-Nov 2010, which is a problem of deep concern to trade unions.  Modern Apprenticeships are clearly a positive method in helping to tackle the issue because they can provide a rare opportunity for young people to earn while learning new skills.  They also provide the employee with an industry recognised qualification combined with on-the-job experience.

Trade union engagement with this programme is essential.  There are a number of workplaces in which unions are involved with the development and running of the Modern Apprenticeship programme. We believe these workplaces to be better paid with better completion rates.  There is also high progression from a Modern Apprenticeship post to permanent employment.

Increasingly, unions are driving at encouraging employers to start up Modern Apprenticeship programmes with guaranteed jobs on successful completion. This is not only good for the employees, the employers and the unions, but it is also good for Scottish society.  We cannot afford to fail successive generations of young workers.

Whatever the outcome of the Scottish elections in May, it’s clear that Modern Apprenticeships will still be an important tool in tackling increasing youth unemployment.

A section of the Scottish Union Learning website has been developed to provide further information on Modern Apprenticeships in Scotland.  This can be accessed at www.scottishunionlearning.com/apprenticeships.

Tommy Breslin - Scottish Union Learning

Youth Unemployment- The Facts

Every month I get a very good brief from the Scottish Government on youth unemployment which sets out what’s happening across Scotland. I thought it might be useful to reproduce some of the facts and figures from January’s brief. These figures underline just how much of a problem youth unemployment is in Scotland.

Key Figures

·     The unemployment rate for 18-24 year olds was 17.9% for Scotland for the three month period Sep - Nov 2010. This rate was 0.3 percentage points lower than the UK rate of 18.2%.

·      The employment rate for 18-24 year olds was 62.0% in Scotland, higher than the UK rate of 58.2%.

·      In November 2010, 7.5% of people aged 18-24 were on the claimant count in Scotland, higher than the UK rate of 6.8%.

Summary

·      Scotland’s youth unemployment rate is 0.3 percentage points lower than that of the UK. This is the second consecutive Labour Market Stats release where Scotland has had a lower unemployment rate.

·      Over the year Scotland’s youth unemployment rate increased by 3.2 percentage points whilst the UK unemployment rate increased by 0.6 percentage points.

·      The rise in the youth unemployment level is Scotland over the year has been driven by a rise in the number of young unemployed women. Over the past year, the number of unemployed females increased by 12,000 with the rate increasing by 5.9 percentage points. While, the number of young unemployed males increased by 2,000 people, with the rate increasing by 0.8 percentage points over the year.

·      Over the last year, the youth employment rate in Scotland has decreased by 1.7 percentage points, whilst the UK saw an decrease of 0.4 percentage points. However the Scottish youth employment rate is 3.8 percentage points above the UK rate.

·      The number of 16-19 year olds who are not in employment, education or training is 39,000, accounting for 14.8% of the age group (July 2009 –June 2010). Over two years this has increased by 3.6 percentage points. Change over the year is not significant due to small sample sizes of the 16-19 cohort.

·      The 18-24 claimant count has decreased by 840 individuals on the previous year. With a decrease of 0.2 percentage points. Scotland saw a smaller fall than the UK where the claimant count rate fell by 1.0 percentage points over the same period.

   The claimant count rate for young females (age 18-24) in December 2010 was 6.1 percentage points less than the rate for males.

I also saw a very interesting report by David Bell and David Blanchflower looking at unemployment. In this report they take the time to go over the reasons why we should be concerned about unemployment generally and youth unemployment specifically. I thought it was a useful reminder and goes to show just how damaging current economic choices are likely to be.

“The major reasons cited in the literature for why we care about unemployment are as follows:

1)   Because of the lost output involved. During a long period of unemployment, workers can lose their skills, causing a loss of human capital.

2)   Unemployment is a stressful life event that makes people unhappy.

3)   Unemployment increases susceptibility to malnutrition, illness, mental stress, and loss of self-esteem, leading to depression. Goldsmith, Veum and Darity (1996, 1997) found, for example, using data from the NLSY that being jobless injures self-esteem and fosters feelings of externality and helplessness among youths. Moreover, they also found evidence that the psychological imprint of joblessness persists.

4)   Increases in the unemployment rate tend to be associated with increases in the suicide rate. The unemployed appear to have a higher propensity to commit suicide.

5)   Being unemployed can also reduce the life expectancy of workers.

6)   Unemployment increases the probability of poor physical health outcomes such as heart attacks in later life.

7)   The long-term unemployed are at a particular disadvantage trying to find work. The effects of unemployment appear to depend a lot on how long the person has been unemployed for. People's morale sinks as the duration of unemployment rises. Longterm unemployment is especially harmful. "The long-term unemployed have largely given up hope," (Layard, 1986, p.96).

8)   Unemployment while young, especially of long duration, causes permanent scars rather than temporary blemishes.32 For the young a spell of unemployment does not end with that spell; it raises the probability of being unemployed in later years and has a wage penalty. These effects are much larger than for older people.

9)   As unemployment rates increase, crime rates tend to rise, especially property crime. Indeed, there is some recent evidence that property crime has now started to increase in the UK. According to the British Crime Survey for the period July to September 2008, police recorded domestic burglaries rose by four per cent.34 Thornberry and Christensen (1984), for example, find evidence that a cycle develops whereby involvement in crime reduces subsequent employment prospects which then raises the likelihood of participating in crime. Fougere et al (2006) find that increases in youth unemployment causes increases in burglaries, thefts and drug offences. Hansen and Machin (2002) find a statistically significant negative relationship between the number of offences reported by the police over a two year period for property and vehicle crime and the proportion of workers paid beneath the minimum before its introduction. Hence, there are more crime reductions in areas that initially, had more low-wage workers. Falk and Zweimuller (2005) find a significant positive relation between unemployment and right-wing criminal activities. Carmichael and Ward (2001) found in Great Britain that youth unemployment and adult unemployment are both significantly and positively related to burglary, theft, fraud and forgery and total crime rates. For each of these offence categories the relationship between youth unemployment and the specific crime was found to be somewhat stronger. Carmichael and Ward (2000) found that there is a systematic positive relationship between burglary rates and male unemployment regardless of age.

10)               Increases in the unemployment rate, lowers the happiness of everyone, not just the unemployed. The fear of becoming unemployed in the future lowers a person’s subjective wellbeing.”

Helen Martin- STUC

Calling all Lib Dems

The STUC today wrote an open letter to all Lib Dem MSPs and MPs in Scotland. Their conference begins tomorrow in Liverpool and we hope that Scottish Liberal Democrats will join us in rejecting calls by George Osborne and Nick Clegg to remove an additional £4 billion on top of the £11 billion that they have already taken out of the welfare budget.   

In our letter we condemn Nick Clegg’s comments that welfare payments should be “an engine of mobility...rather than a giant cheque written by the state to compensate the poor for their predicament," and we make the point that with long-term unemployment on the rise there simply aren’t enough jobs to go around.

Here is an extract from our letter:

STUC is receiving a very clear message from its own members particularly its disabled members, not to mention our sister organisations in the Scottish Campaign on Welfare Reform. People are becoming increasingly fearful for their futures and increasingly angry as it is insisted ‘that more people must find work’ when so little is being done to tackle unemployment.  Figures released this week by STUC showed a 132% increase in long-term unemployment across Scotland with the highest regional increase of 475% being recorded in the Scottish Secretary’s own constituency.

It remains the fact that benefit payments in the UK are low compared to most other countries, income inequality is stubbornly high and work is not the automatic route out of poverty that it should be with the incidence of working family child poverty on the increase.

Two thirds of the UK welfare budget goes to those above working age, with just one third being spent on those of working age and children.   Whilst fully supporting the pledge to safeguard elderly benefits, STUC is horrified to contemplate the cuts that will be borne by the others.

The letter ends by calling on Scottish Liberal Democrats to join us in our Better Way campaign in order to ‘buttress the most draconian attack on welfare in a generation.’

Along with the open letter the STUC also unveiled its campaign banner which is a humorous depiction of the respective roles of David Cameron and Nick Clegg. The banner is currently hanging on the outside of the STUC building and is designed to raise awareness of the Better Way Campaign and challenge the myth that there is no alternative to the Government’s cuts.

Helen Martin – STUC.

Nick Clegg, Generational Failure and Looking Young People in the Eye

Nick Clegg made a speech this morning in which he set out one of the strategic aims of the coalition Government. He said that he wanted to achieve a ‘horizon shift’ which he defined as focusing on long-term goals rather than short-term issues, to build a ‘fairer and more prosperous future’. He then went on to say that one the aims of his speech today was to ‘argue for justice between generations and warn that we are in danger of failing the next generation.’


I have to say I was genuinely quite interested in what he had to say on this issue. One of the hardest hit groups in this recession are young people. Youth unemployment in Scotland is currently running at 19.4% which is higher than for any other age group. So I believe that the Government should be putting more emphasis on what’s happening to young people in this economic crisis and that there should be an emphasis on avoiding ‘failing the next generation’

So what did Clegg actually say on this issue. Well here it is:

‘The Prime Minister and I are from the same generation. And frankly, we know that both our generation - and the one before us - got it wrong. We have run up debts, despoiled the planet and allowed too many of our institutions to wither. For us, the longer-term view we are adopting in government will help to wipe the slate clean, and ensure that future generations can thrive, without being burdened with the dead weight of our debt, and our failings.


We are absolutely determined that we will be able to look our children and grandchildren in the eye and say we did the best we could for them, even if this means taking some difficult, unpopular decisions today.’

I have to say I am quite disappointed by this. Nick Clegg seems to have completely missed the point that there are young people who need the Government’s help and support now. Instead he is holding up some lofty ideal of ‘I’m doing it for the children’ as a justification for making dramatic public spending cuts and for his Government’s obsession with the deficit.

One of the first cuts this Government made when they came to power was the Future Jobs Fund. They scrapped this initiative overnight as part of their £6 billion ‘efficiency’ savings which they had promised before the election would only come from money that was being wasted.

This scheme was helping young people who would otherwise be out of work find a job. It was giving them experience of the labour market, giving them training and paying the minimum wage. But now it is gone.

I can’t help but be annoyed at Nick Clegg’s view of his obligations to the next generation and I can’t help but think that this ‘horizon shift’ and focus on the long-term conveniently lets him forget those who are being hurt today by the Government’s political decisions.

I think to be able to look the young people of Scotland in the eye Nick Clegg will have to do better than empty words.

Helen Martin- STUC