Internships, the Modern Day Slavery

By John Kim | November 20th, 2009

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Some of the greatest empires in society has been built on cheap labor. 25% of the Roman Empire, and 30% - 40% of Italy were slaves. During the peak of the United Kingdoms power, 5% of their population were slaves. And for those of us who grew up in America, we’ve all heard about the horrors of slavery time and time again. Slavery were vital economic pillars of society that allowed these nations to grow in power. Although slavery has been abolished in most developed countries today, with all the loop holes, modern day slavery still exists in the form of outsourcing, migrant workers, and something called an “Internship”.

It’s true that Mexican day laborers, and factory workers from China are paid a small sum for their work, but this is hardly enough to live on. A Chinese worker is literally imprisoned in a factory, and is held captive by the fear of losing their jobs. In America 3 to 4 families are usually stuffed in an apartment so they can pool their money together and survive. Both share the same degraded standard of living. But while these types of workers/slaves are in great supply, there is not so much supply for cheap white collar jobs. If businesses could only find a way to attract skilled people, and dupe them into working for little to nothing in return for something called “work experience”. Maybe they could call it an unpaid internship, give them worthless college credit, and laugh their way to the bank with their sacks of money?

For those unaware of how businesses work, it’s all about profits. But in order to generate profits you need people to buy. In order to get people to buy, they need to lower the cost of their product by slashing overhead. The way to slash overhead is to find cheap labor. Now with everyone making less, businesses need to further slash costs to encourage buying. This viscous cycle keeps churning and churning until we reach a boiling point, and the world as a whole will just explode. The only way to prevent Armageddon is for the government to put policy into place that will prevent this type of modern day slavery.

As I am aware that college students, or Americans in general, are a lot better off than a day laborer. It is still hard to find a decent job for anyone lacking experience. Examples of this is rampant if you try to find work, as most job posting require 2 years of work experience. How is anyone suppose to magically get 2 years of work experience from thin air? I guess they are expected to work for free for 2 years while living in a homeless shelter and maintaining a decent appearance. I don’t know about you, but if I spent two years in a homeless shelter, I think the least of my worries would be to make sure my pants were wrinkle free.

If you need more convincing, than lets examine the medical field. Here is a ten week nursing internship program, which would give the bank just enough time to foreclose on their house. Oops, they did it again! You would think with all the money they are receiving in the medical industry, they could at least flip the bill for gas and food for their interns. And can you believe people are lining up, to give up their precious time, to work for free? I even had a friend tell me of a Disney internship program that would essentially teach kids important real world experience. By the time these guys were hired, they were pushing around a hot dog cart with the 100 degree sun beating down on them. I never knew pushing hot dogs around qualified as real-world experience. Maybe a real stupid world experience. But the point is that for people with financial troubles, they are in a dilemma, giving up their time for free in hopes of landing a better job in the future, or paying bills that need to be resolved now.

Since I’m a freelancer, this idea of free work or work for almost no pay comes close to home. As a web developer I see people asking for free volunteer work all the time. They don’t realize the customization involved with building a website, and they see it as just something put together like Legos. As they don’t have the funds to pay for a professional to put up their site, they ask for a kind hearted person to do it for them at no charge, in exchange they will give out recommendations. That is absolutely the oldest trick in the book.

Websites are a lot more than just code and artwork put together. It’s the science of human behavior, and where you place a button or how easy you make your site to navigate can make or break it. Plus there is a marketing aspect of a website that involves your site optimizing itself for all the major search engines out there. Also there are performance issues with a website that can only be identified by a seasoned professional. A person will wait no longer than 13 seconds for a site to load, if you take longer than this, you are looking for trouble. Asking for all this knowledge and expertise for free is absolutely ridiculous. Someone who has spent years perfecting their craft should not be expected to work for free. Someone who has spent years in school learning a skill should not be expected to work for free. And every single human in this earth should expect a decent wage for their time. Asking for free work should never be OK, as it adds to the flame of this big whole economic mess we are in. If someone has a service, you should pay them fairly for their time, or just do without.

So I guess we can say that slavery has never really been abolished in this country, it just comes in other forms. Our society has grown in wealth, and it was from this modern day slavery. If you are a charity, then yes, you can ask for free work as it is for a good cause. But if you are just taking advantage of others, then lets hope what goes around comes around.

Have any internship, aka modern day slavery, horror stories? please share.