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| Prime Minister, David Cameron has launched a new intern scheme |
THE GOVERNMENT has launched a national internship scheme that will see organisations paying their interns.
The move to address unpaid internships is a welcome change for future graduates. Many of whom are digging deeper in their pockets, trying to gain ‘experience’ in order to even get recognised for a paid graduate job.
Third year undergraduate at Canterbury Christ Church University, Kate Jarvis, 23 studying English Literature said: “I have been doing internships and work experience during my time at university. The cost of it all however, has made me go overdrawn on plenty of occasions.
“I am currently interning at View magazine in Folkestone who do not substitute my travel costs or food allowance. I do not get paid for my work that gets published either.
“I just think it’s unfair that I have to end up literally broke to show how keen I am to work for them.”
Newly elected Welfare and Education Sabbatical Officer for CCCU, Jo Bartson-Umuliisa, said: “Its good as now it will feel as if you are not doing the organisation’s dirty work but more getting recognised.
“I recently attended a NUS conference who stated that they are going to lobby the Government to tell businesses and organisations to give interns the national minimum wage.”
So far only a number of organisations have agreed to the Government’s new scheme.
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| Channel 4 are one of the companies agreeing to new internship rules |
The Government’s plans also bring smiles to future graduates whose parents aren’t aristocrats.
Naomi Taylor, 22 studying Marketing at CCCU said: “I’m about to graduate and this is great to hear. This will see everybody from every class having the opportunity to enter career fields. It should be about what you know.
“But as everybody knows it not what you know is who you know. I think that’s always been the case but it counts for a lot more now.”
Christina Pita, 21 studying Media at CCCU added: “The government needed to do something. I am living in a generation where it is harder than ever to shift social class.
“If you were born into a lower class family, it’s sad to say but you will probably stay at that. The same applies for the upper class. You will never see them shift into a lower class.
“The fact is you need support from your family when you graduate these days. If you take on a six-month internship that is unpaid, the person you’ll be asking to help you get that train to work or to buy the food for you lunch will be your mum or your dad.
“If they can’t afford it, you can’t do an internship, which means you cannot progress. You end up in a job that you didn’t even want to be in. That’s the truth when it comes down to it.”
In a letter to The Daily Telegraph Nick Clegg and Iain Duncan Smith laid out their strategy to build career choices, stating that your job should not be based on ‘who your father’s friends are’.
‘Our drive to open up internships is intended to prevent the lucky few grabbing all the best chances’ said the letter, addressing the fact that many young people are cut out of the internship system because they simply cannot afford to work for free.
‘This is mobility for the middle, not just the bottom,’ continued the letter, revealing that ‘More than half the people at the top of the legal profession, politics, business and journalism went to fee-paying schools, which can only be afforded by a few’.
The announcement by the Government comes after the scandals of the Tories. It was revealed that internships were sold and auctioned for thousands of pounds at the Conservatives’ annual Black and White Party.
“Their scandal just confirms that you need to be an elitist to get that job you want. That’s also evident in the rise of tuition fees" said Jo Bartson-Umiliisa.
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