Another attack on the private sector and the future of your children
The Cosmopolitan Conservative is a very bright lady by the name of Adrienne Royer, who holds all sorts of really important credentials (besides just sharing my name.) I'm saying this upfront so as to avoid confusion. Read what she's written about internships and take another peek at the future of your children.
From Cosmopolitan Conservative:
Obama Admin: Now Regulating Internships
Imagine that you’re graduating from college soon. With unemployment at 10%, do you have a chance of getting a job when competing with experienced workers? What are your options?
For many recent college graduates, they take internships. It’s not ideal, but it often gives new workers experience and puts their foot in the door when openings do come up.
That option may not exist much longer. read the rest
4 comments:
One little bit of dissent here: there are internships and then there are internships. There are established, regularized internships that fulfill a legitimate educational function -- providing real-world training to complete the educational process begun in school. These internships are very much like the old apprenticeship idea. And it makes sense that these internships don't usually include much if any pay. The intern is really there in an educational capacity, learning and being mentored by someone in "the real world."
But then there are predatory internships -- where the company or sponsoring individual basically use the intern as a worker. They don't teach much, don't mentor much, don't help the student integrate real world experience into the theoretical framework the student has learned in school. Instead the student/intern is used for work. Work that the sponsoring group or individual would otherwise pay somebody for. These kind of internships we could use far less of. They are, I think quite arguably, a violation of long-existing labor laws, not to mention basic principles of fairness.
Mark - I absolutely agree with you. However, the world will always have predatory type people and I don't think it's the job of the federal government to regulate the activity. I dare say the government internships are probably the worst offenders, and they are being left out of the regulation. I would guess that Monica Lewinsky did not advance her education in the area of her interests at the hands of Bill Clinton. Or, then again - maybe she did.
Personally, I would not participate in any kind of internship that didn't involve some sort of pay. It smacks of slavery to me.
When I had budding hairdresser intern at my salon, they were paid for the simple reason they did work that was valuable. If they make it possible for me to make more money, justice demands that they should receive some recompense. Was it as much as a full fledged hairdresser would make? No, but it was still win-win. They learned at the feet of a master (moi), not only how to be a better hairdresser, but business and people management, salesmanship, wrapped up in a package of healthy motivation, and I got some much needed help.
But isn't making sure that people are paid a just wage part of the normal governmental regulatory activity that Catholic social teaching assumes? Thomas Aquinas thought so. The question isn't of the government setting prices on labor (I'm not a fan, for example, of the minimum wage laws), but of the government making sure that people actually are paid for work that they do which is valuable. This is a fundamental principle of the Anglo-American tradition -- found in Locke, for example. And it was the basis of Lincoln's opposition to the institution of chattel slavery.
Mark - if the government can set minimum wage (which they shouldn't, then how in the world are they going to say someone must be paid without setting an amount or whatnot? And why are the government internships and non-profits left out of the equation. It appears to be an attack on capitalism.
It just another instance of the government assuming the role of nanny. Nobody interns at McDonalds. Internships are usually in the fields where the prospective intern should be able to discern whether they are being scammed.
If after 4 years of college, and a few more years of, say, law school the student is being scammed, well then, they deserve exactly what they get. I like Dave Ramsey's wording of "paying a stupid tax." It will be a great life lesson for them.
Post a Comment