Intern

U of T expert on how youth activism is kicking unpaid internships to the curb

noreen.rasbach — Thu, 07 Jun 2018 16:48:27 +0000

U of T expert on how youth activism is kicking unpaid internships to the curb noreen.rasbach Thu, 06/07/2018 - 12:48

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Unpaid interns protest in Geneva in 2016. Activism has played a big part in how unpaid internships are now being regarded with disdain (photo by Global Intern Coalition)

Labour

The Conversation

��Ƶ Mississauga

It’s job search season for students and fresh graduates, which means a bump in media interest in internships.

Barely a decade ago, we’d expect news articles to include tips for landing a “dream internship” or to quote an employer boasting that unpaid interns are economically efficient for firms. But today, the media coverage generally takes a different tone.

For example, the U.K.‘s The Guardian recently called out British Vogue for recruiting unpaid interns.

The article’s main source is an intern advocate who reported the fashion magazine to Britain’s HM Revenue and Customs for potentially violating minimum wage laws.

It notes that a Vogue “workplace shadowing” role undermines the editor’s stated commitment to expand diversity at the magazine since unpaid internships generally exclude people who can’t afford to work for free and generally favour the children of the wealthy.

In Canada on International Women’s Day, CBC News reported on the need for improved protections against sexual harassment of unpaid interns.

Sexual harassment in the workplace is one of many ordeals faced by unpaid interns (photo by Shutterstock)

What’s behind the pivot in public opinion that has seen internships shift from a benign rite of passage to a lightning rod workers’ rights issue? Activism.

Since 2010, an intern rights movement has been remarkably successful at winning victories for interns, drawing attention to just one vital issue of workers’ rights.

Activism has made a difference

As part of our research on collective responses to precarious work in cultural and creative industries, we have been tracking how young workers, interns past and present and their allies are confronting unpaid internships and the cultural conditions that condone them. They’re doing so via protests, online campaigns and government lobbying.

Grassroots intern labour groups are led by young people motivated by their own experiences and those of their peers, who are underemployed, engaged in long stretches of unpaid work or simply unable to afford to work for no pay.

Groups such as Intern Aware and Precarious Workers Brigade in the U.K., Intern Labor Rights in the United States, Interns Australia and the Canadian Intern Association (on whose advisory board two of us sit) have formed to protest the pressure to work for no wages to gain “experience.”

These groups have produced research and educational texts (such as Surviving Internships: A Counter Guide to Free Labour in the Arts) and staged demonstrations that grab headlines.

Under the banner of the Global Intern Coalition, intern organizations have orchestrated an annual Global Intern Strike, a day each February where interns worldwide protest unpaid work in fields such as international development, arts and culture and in various academic programs.

UN interns not diverse

This past February, thousands of students protested in Quebec – their slogan, “exploitation is not a vocation” – while United Nations interns emphasized the high cost of interning at the UN, which can block people from diverse economic and cultural backgrounds from vital work experience.

According to the Fair Internship Initiative, 64 per cent of UN interns come from high-income countries.

Collectively, intern advocates have shaken up consensus on unpaid internships.

As part of our aforementioned research, we analyzed hundreds of news media articles between 2008 and 2015 and traced a shift in tone in how unpaid internships are covered, who is quoted as sources and what narrative devices journalists use to help tell stories about unpaid internships.

Early articles typically endorsed internships. They positioned unpaid internships as essential for standing out in a hyper-competitive labour market and relied on employers and career counsellors as go-to sources.

During the 2008-2009 recession, internships were viewed more critically and contextualized as a side effect of youth unemployment, but generally articles aligned with employer interest in attracting cheap labour. Unpaid internships were pitched as future investments, reinforcing the outlook that optimizing their employability is every young person’s calling.

As the years progressed, interpretations shifted. Articles begin to emphasize class-based exclusion in the intern economy, challenging assumptions about meritocracy and a slew of articles took a legal angle, focusing on employers that break minimum wage regulations.

Narrative changed

By 2015, the voices of interns and activists were being amplified, helping shift the narrative. Activists wrote op-eds, served as accessible sources for journalists and held events that spurred media coverage, including descending upon London’s Serpentine Gallery dressed as Santa Clauses carrying signs reading: “All we want for Xmas is pay.”

Tracing coverage over time shows that intern labour activism has had concrete effects, altering public discourse about unpaid internships and informing government policy reform on internships in countries like Canada and the U.K.

Activists have brought attention to unpaid internships and their deleterious effects by naming and shaming employers who break minimum wage law on social media, and have pushed governments to make concrete changes to legal and policy structures.

Video by Euractiv

The Canadian Intern Association has been a major player in shifting Canadian policy.

In 2017, the federal government banned unpaid internships in federally regulated industries. In Ontario, the province’s Ministry of Labour clarified that unpaid internships are legal in very few instances – typically only for-credit academic internships.

U.S. law has been amended to protect interns against sexual harassment. Some media unions, like at VICE Canada, have collectively bargained for minimum hourly rates for interns.

In the U.K., various political officials support placing a four-week cap on internships, and a bill to that effect is making its way through the Upper Chamber.

Setbacks, challenges

Intern activists have made meaningful gains. But there are setbacks and new challenges.

Earlier this year, for example, the U.S. Department of Labor brought in measures that make it more difficult for an unpaid intern to argue they are entitled to a wage.

Shining the spotlight on unpaid internships is not the end of a struggle, but rather a training ground.

Advocates who have led the fight against unpaid internships, often a young person’s first foray into the labour market, have raised awareness about difficult labour conditions and have fought for the tenet that workplace inequalities are unacceptable and must not be regarded as inevitable.

Displacing the cliché “pay your dues” with the call to “pay your interns” is a significant achievement for a young movement.

Challenges, of course, remain. Improved regulations are only as good as enforcement, for example. Without careful oversight, unpaid internships will continue informally.

What is clear, however, is that the “experiential learning” of the intern rights movement over the last few years can only help in the broader labour battles to come.

Nicole Cohen is an assistant professor at the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology at the ��Ƶ Mississauga. Greig de Peuter is an associate professor of communication studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. Kate Oakley is a professor of cultural policy at the University of Leeds.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Meet undergrad Frank Gu, one of the U of T interns lighting up Nanoleaf

sgupta — Wed, 04 Nov 2015 06:01:59 +0000

Meet undergrad Frank Gu, one of the U of T interns lighting up Nanoleaf sgupta Wed, 11/04/2015 - 01:01

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Frank Gu says the energy at Nanoleaf shouts “We are going to do great things, so if you are ready, hop aboard!” (photo courtesy Blue Sky solar racing)

Brianna Goldberg

Author legacy

Brianna Goldberg

Undergraduate Students

Subheadline

Travelling to Shenzhen, China, the second-year Engineering student discovers he has no limits

How does a second-year undergraduate student nab a coveted internship with a global lighting startup like Nanoleaf?

It helps to offer critical thinking, creativity and boundless energy – but having the boss share your intellectually impressive hobby doesn't hurt.

When Nanoleaf CEO Gimmy Chu met electrical and computer engineering student Frank Gu, he discovered that the young applicant was a member of U of T's Blue Sky Solar Racing Club. Chu had worked on the acclaimed Blue Sky car almost a decade earlier.

“Gimmy gave me an assignment to prove my capability for the intern position,” Gu says. “Then, Gimmy and I proceeded to talk about Blue Sky Solar Racing at U of T.”

U of T News is profiling some of the interns helping to power Nanoleaf, an LED startup from U of T Engineering alumni that recently announced a new product launch in partnership with Apple. (Read about the fourth-year math and statistics undergrad and the science undergrad working for Nanoleaf.)

“The U of T presence is still very strong at Nanoleaf, and I believe it always will be,” says Nanoleaf spokesperson Leslie Chen. “When we were looking for interns to join our team, the first place we looked was at U of T.”

(Read the latest news about Nanoleaf and Apple)

U of T News writer Brianna Goldberg spoke with Gu about his experiences at Nanoleaf, which he joined in early 2015.

How did Nanoleaf recruit you?

I met the Nanoleaf team during the You’re Next startup career fair 2015. They had a booth in the lower level of the MaRS building, and a very bright light bulb for demonstration. I remember the first thought that flashed past my mind when I saw what they were doing: “MY EYES!” So that blinding experience was how the Nanoleaf people made their impression on me. (Read more about the You're Next career fair)

I did the standard routine of shaking some hands, taking a card, and dropping off a resume. After one day, no reply, not even a confirmation. One week, still nothing. Finally, I emailed Gimmy Chu, Nanoleaf's CEO, and he got back to me pretty quickly wanting to schedule a meeting to chat. We spoke briefly about some current technological trends. Gimmy gave me an assignment to prove my capability for the intern position. Then, Gimmy and I proceeded to talk about Blue Sky Solar Racing at U of T. Gimmy also worked on the Blue Sky car almost a decade ago, and I am an active team member of the Blue Sky team. I guess that’s how Nanoleaf recruited me! (Read more about Blue Sky Solar Racing at U of T)

Why did you want to work with them?

At first I just wanted a job for some additional learning experience and a challenge. But after meeting with Gimmy, I was immediately attracted to Nanoleaf. Of all the CEOs/managers/bosses that I have dealt with in the past, I can confidently say that Gimmy is the most “chill” (excuse my slang). At the time, I was merely a frosh in school for only half a year. Gimmy did not seem to mind.

He was interested in two things: what I can offer, and what I want to obtain from working with Nanoleaf. It is almost a feeling of urgency, a liveliness that shouts, “We are going to do great things, so if you are ready, hop aboard!” I think it’s this energy that drew me to them, and it’s because of this energy that I am staying with them. The first day at work, I stayed till 8 p.m. because I felt like I was finally in a place I belonged.

Does your work at Nanoleaf connect with or supplement what you’ve learned at U of T?

The projects I work on at Nanoleaf give me an opportunity to convert theoretical knowledge obtained in the classrooms into real applications that serve real purposes. Specifically, the project management and strategies I learned in my Engineering Strategies and Practice course were used heavily during the discussion and design of a solution at Nanoleaf. Computer Fundamentals taught the basics of the C/C++ programming language, and writing kernel drivers at Nanoleaf allowed me to apply this abstract knowledge. These are some aspects that connect directly with my courses.

I believe university is also a place to learn how to socialize and form new connections and friendships. Beyond the scope of courses at U of T, working at Nanoleaf has exposed me to an exciting cross section of different social groups in our society: programmers, PhDs, electrical engineers, artists, writers, marketing and strategists. As a surprise, during my stay in the Shenzhen office, I was also offered the opportunity to visit Nanoleaf’s production facility, providing me with a rich first-hand experience of the modern electronics manufacturing industry.

So yes, I would say working at Nanoleaf complements my academic and social pursuit at U of T greatly!

What have you learned in working with Nanoleaf that surprised you?

Your “limit” is where you define it to be. When I first started working at Nanoleaf, I had only a preliminary knowledge of the programming languages used: C, Javascript and Swift. However, Gimmy let me begin with a highly experimental project that involved networking, servers, databases, cloud architectures, and whatever other jargon that’s out there in the industry. I took it up as a challenge. A month into the project, and I was already comfortable with the technologies involved. Two months in, I began cooperating with the rest of the team in the main program development. By May, I was patching up kernel drivers (advanced development) with guidance from Tom.

At Nanoleaf, I was surprised by my “limit.” I have no limit. We all have no limits. If I take something as a challenge, I can always push myself ever harder and further to accomplish it no matter how daunting the task. The key is to always believe in yourself and acknowledge that you can be your own greatest enemy.

Interested in entrepreneurship and startups at U of T? Visit the Banting & Best Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship

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