Internsheep X Youth and Work: the Shameless Article

Shameless Magazine is a Canadian alternative magazine for young women and trans youth. The current issue (order it here) is all about youth at work and it has some great features on young female farmers, sex workers' rights, taking on the union busters, and unpaid internships! Carley Centen, the brains behind Internsheep, wrote an excellent article exploring the rise of unpaid internships in Canada. It provides an excellent overview of the dimensions of the problems associated with this form of unpaid labour such as how unpaid internships are eroding entry level jobs and how it's a form of precarious employment.

Carley interviewed me for the article and on unpaid internships I'm quoted as saying "This is exploitation of the worst sort and it is an epidemic that is infecting the current generation of workers entering the workforce. Precarity is the new watchword for young people as they come to grips with a world in which their labour is as disposable as their possessions." At other points in the article I discuss how internships are a by-product of neoliberalism, what young workers can do to put themselves on a better legal footing to contest their misclassification, and how unpaid internships are a growing segment of the labour market.

For some of my previous articles discussing unpaid internships, see: the legality of unpaid internships in Ontario; public policy considerations; the complicity of universities in the unpaid internship scam and my analysis of York University's practices vis-a-vis unpaid internships; and, the use of unpaid internships in the cultural/non-profit sector and in journalism/publishing. Also, the New York Times has a "Room for Debate" feature on unpaid internships this past weekend, author Ross Perlin (Intern Nation) was featured as one of the writers.