I agree that nobody should work for free. While “Unpaid internships rig the system. Curb them, now” makes a great Labour soundbite (Opinion, 15 December), it omits salient facts. There is no need to advocate new laws. Interns undertaking work, rather than shadowing, are already entitled to the national minimum wage. They are protected against working excessive hours and have rights to paid holiday and rest breaks. As your article suggests, enforcement agencies may not have the resources to protect these rights, but that is a different matter.
Many employers are aware of and gladly benefit from unpaid labour, particularly during this economic cycle. Most are not ignorant of the law, rather disinclined to impact this cost on their bottom line. As businesses cling to corporate social responsibility credentials, the basic legal (and moral) obligation of paying for work done, whatever workers’ social class, is getting lost.
Work experiences and their durations vary. Short-term work experience must be differentiated from the lengthy “exploitative” internships to which you refer. The former enables individuals to gain an understanding of a vocation before pursuing it. In the legal profession, work placements are typically outside of term time, of short duration (two to four weeks) and often paid. All precisely to encourage equality of access.
Melanie Stancliffe
Partner, Thomas Eggar LLP
• Unpaid internships are not just a scourge for the young. Women confronting a gender pay gap and unaffordable childcare are also sucked in. I am a fortysomething intern with a Cambridge degree and an MA. I spent six years in a part-time office admin job after having kids. I quit to do an MA in hope of getting better work. I am determined not to go back to the ghastly coffee morning circuit of an overqualified woman. But working nearly full-time for nothing while my three kids cook their own suppers seems a poor reward for trying to better my prospects. I’m at the “bank of my husband”, not “mum and dad”, but it is still infantilising and demoralising.
Name and address supplied
• When I was six the war ended and, as “normal” life resumed, the expression “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” became familiar to me. In time I understood it, but I think it shameful that 70 years on we are still rigging things to perpetuate the class war.
Beverly Cochran
Eastbourne, East Sussex
