Internships: A step on the job ladder or legalised slavery?
Except it may not actually be legal as it's possible that it may not actually be legal to effectively employ people for less than the minimum wage. It's one thing to work for a charity or non-profit for expenses, but a VC (Atomico Ventures, founded in 2006 by Niklas Zennström with Janus Friis) funded web startup? And it's not even sweat equity.16 Musley Ln, Ware, Hertfordshire SG12 7
It's sad to think of it, but perhaps there needs to be more regulation or standardization of how interns are treated.
Now read the article. MadBid.com is a VC funded startup. They use interns to staff their help desk and put them on the graveyard shift on 3-6 month rotation. That's just the tip of the iceberg. There are plenty of examples like that.
The problem is that youth unemployment is so high that there's big competition for even unpaid jobs just to get that first job experience on the CV. The balance of power has switched in the labour market from the individual to the company. There's no doubt that this situation is being exploited by companies to keep costs down on the necessary but unpopular jobs.
I'm all for employing people still at school or Uni on short term contracts on minimum wage to help out. These days I can just about justify taking recent grads on a minimum wage trial for 3 months. Some times you luck into people who later turn into valuable full employees. But doing that as a policy to replace employees and just paying a notional expenses wage is exploitation and it is actually illegal. We have minimum wage legislation for a reason.
Now of course, using the word "Slavery" is link bait. But I'm not going to apologise for it.