Unit 6, Listening 2, Interns in New York


Interns in New York

Instructor:           OK. Last class, we talked about the benefits of internships, both for companies and for individuals. Today, we’re going to look at the biggest downside of being an intern. So, we learned last class that some industries in particular, such as film production, journalism, and politics, are the most likely to employ interns.

Let’s start by taking a closer look at journalism. According to the National Union of Journalists, a group in the United Kingdom, 82 percent of people who start to work in journalism do so as interns, and 92 percent of these interns are unpaid. That’s right, almost all of the people who start careers related to reporting the news are unpaid interns!

It’s gotten so bad that some interns have even sued[1] their employers for unpaid wages, and they are winning these legal battles. For example, one former intern, Lucy Bickerton, sued a famous New York film production company. Her lawsuit claimed that, as an unpaid intern, Lucy worked an average of six hours a day for several days a week over four months. In interviews, Lucy has said that she isn’t against internships altogether. She learned a lot through her internship and was grateful for her experience, but she believed that the job she was doing was that of a full-time production assistant and that she should have been paid for her work. Her complaint was about the fairness of the internship system. So, in the end, a judge agreed with her and awarded Lucy and some of her predecessors $110,000.

Other interns have joined groups such as Intern Aware and the Global Intern Coalition that have protested and organized strikes to draw attention to the problem of unpaid internships. According to experts, while internships are valuable opportunities for young people to get a taste of working in an industry, many have become unpaid entry-level positions. Interns are not always thought of as students and instead can be viewed by some companies as free, disposable workers. Why has this change come about?

Many researchers point to the high youth unemployment rate for this trend. It was 12.5 percent last year for 20- to 24-year-olds. Young people are graduating from university and flooding[2] the workforce, and the competition for jobs is fierce. So, we might conclude that government policies that lower the unemployment rate might be a good way to ensure that interns are paid. Until then, companies can take advantage of these young workers.

OK, so, what do you think? Is an unpaid internship worth it? I’d like to hear your thoughts on this. For homework, please participate in the online discussion in our class website. Give your opinion and respond to two other classmates. See you next week!

 

Nicholas:             Well, what did you think of the lecture today, HyoJin?

HyoJin:                 Hmm. It was pretty interesting, since I’m actually planning to do an internship after I graduate from university next year. I mean, I’ve heard that interning can be hit or miss. It could be a really great chance to learn a lot if I’m lucky and get hired by a good company. My older brother landed an internship at a big tech company a few years ago, and he said it was amazing. He got to work with cutting-edge[3] technology, and he was given a lot of responsibility. He was paid for his work, not a lot, but enough to cover his rent and living expenses. But my older sister had a very different experience. She studied history at university, so she interned at a museum. It was terrible. She was stuck scanning papers in a windowless office eight hours a day all summer long. Her co-workers treated her really badly and made her get coffee for them and do the boring jobs that no one wanted to do. She basically hated every minute of her internship, and because it was an internship, she wasn’t paid anything for her work.

Nicholas:             Oh, wow. That sounds pretty miserable. So, why are you going to do it, if you can’t really be sure that you’re going to get an internship with a decent company?

HyoJin:                 Well, my brother wound up meeting some really important people in the tech community. He made a lot of great contacts that he could call on when he started up his own small company. My sister obviously didn’t want to work in the museum where she did her internship, but having that work experience made her more competitive when she applied for jobs at other places. The employers were impressed that she had a big, important museum on her CV[4], and she also got a job pretty quickly. If you ask her now, she says it was totally worth it.

Nicholas:             I guess that makes sense. So, where are you going to intern?

HyoJin:                 Well, I’ve applied at two different nonprofit organizations. One is really big and well known. The other is a smaller, grassroots[5] group. I’m not really sure which I would prefer, to be honest.

Nicholas:             What are the pros and cons of each of them?

HyoJin:                 Well, the internship with the big nonprofit is paid and the other one isn’t. But from what I’ve heard, it seems like I’d be able to work on more interesting and meaningful projects at the smaller organization.

Nicholas:             Hmm. That’s a tough choice.

HyoJin:                 Right?

Nicholas:             I guess you need to ask yourself where you think you might like to really work. I mean, after your internship.

HyoJin:                 Yeah, I have some thinking to do. So, what are you up to this summer? Are you doing an internship?

Nicholas:             I’ll be working all summer at my father’s landscaping company. It’ll be hot, dirty, hard work, but the pay is pretty good, and I like the guys I’ll be working with. Besides, I’ll get to be outside a lot, which I really like, and I’ll be finished every day by five.

HyoJin:                 That doesn’t sound too bad. It sounds like both of us will be pretty busy for the next few months.


[1] sue: verb to make a claim against somebody in court about something that they have said or done to harm you

[2] flood: verb to arrive or go somewhere in large numbers

[3] cutting-edge: adjective the newest, most advanced stage in the development of something

[4] CV: noun a written record of your education and the jobs you have done, that you send when you are applying for a job (a résumé)

[5] grassroots: adjective ordinary people in society or in an organization, rather than the leaders or people who make decisions

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