The Alternative Federal Budget's Recommendations on Unpaid Internships

Yesterday the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives released the 2014 Alternative Federal Budget. The chapter on youth contained a range of recommendations relating to unpaid internships and what the Federal government could do to address this growing form of precarious employment in Canada's labour markets. I assisted Karen Foster, a professor at St. Mary's University,  in writing the chapter and suggest that the recommendations put forward are an excellent point of departure for discussions about what needs to be done at the federal level. Beyond unpaid internships the chapter covers youth un(der)employment, electoral participation, and bullying.

Here's a summary of the recommendations pertaining to youth labour market issues in the Alternative Federal Budget. These are the non-internship recommendations: wage subsidies for employers who hire new employees aged fifteen to twenty-nine; link young people with employers offering real jobs via enhanced labour market information data delivered through Service Canada; and, require that all federally-funded infrastructure projects set aside twenty percent of the employment opportunities for young workers.

The recommendations on unpaid internships are the following: have Statistics Canada track the number of unpaid internships via the Labour Force Survey on an ongoing basis; amend Part II of the Canada Labour Code ("the CLC") to specifically cover interns, unpaid trainees, and students under occupational health and safety protections; amend Part III of the CLC to prohibit unpaid internships and unpaid trainees; amend Part III of the CLC to specifically protect interns, students, and trainees under the labour standards protections; amend section 239.1 of the CLC to require employers to provide wage replacement for students, trainees, learners, or interns who are injured on the job; and, have the Federal government develop a proactive enforcement strategy to crack down on employers using unpaid interns. Those are the recommendations and I highly recommend that you read the chapter of youth (it starts at page 159).