Categoria: International

What a great internship looks like? Interns Australia launches the National Fair Internship Pledge

November 10, chosen day for the dawning of the first International Interns Day, is fast approaching. Interns Australia, the support and advocacy body for young people undertaking work placement in Australia, has decided to mark the occasion with the launch of the National Fair Internship Pledge, an initiative aimed at promoting a virtuous culture of internships and distinguishing the best ones in the country. Repubblica degli Stagisti has broached the subject, along with related others, with Dimity Mannering, 30, newly appointed executive director of Interns Australia. Employed in financial services, communications and stakeholder relations, she has also worked in employment law and advised on the communications for the European Union’s youth unemployment and justice strategies. How and when was Interns Australia established? Interns Australia was established in 2013 by a group of former interns, students and professionals and today has branches in Sydney and Melbourne. IA has quickly became recognised as the national representative body for interns in Australia. While we work across a range of areas, our main focus is on raising awareness of challenges relating to internships through the media, engaging government and industry, speaking with students and interns, which we do mainly through social media and events, undertaking research, and providing insight and consulting to universities, businesses and other groups.Who are the people working at Interns Australia? IA has a group of around eight core volunteers and a large number of supporters. Among our core volunteers, the ages range between 21 and 30, and while the educational profile varies, most have law, economics or humanities backgrounds.Does it benefit from any form of funding? We receive donations from supporters and run fundraising campaigns, as well as receive ad hoc support from various programs. Does the distinction between formative and post-study internships apply in Australia? Internships are very new to Australia and because of this, there is no legal definition of an intern or specific recognition of interns in law. However, there is a provision that means employers do not have to pay students who do work for the purposes of their studies. This is quite an ambiguous part of the law though, and our research shows that many interns aren’t paid even though legally they should be.What about internships held within a company or a public institution: do they differ?No. There is no distinction for this.Is there a limit age for being an intern?Australia has no age limit for interns.In what circumstances an intern must be paid, by law? The law is quite ambiguous but essentially an intern must be paid if the internship is not part of education or training. That said, there are many interns who are not paid yet they are not in education or training, which is in breach of our labour laws – and this is what Interns Australia is trying to change.What do you think is the most critical issue to address as far as Australian interns rights go?From IA’s perspective there a great number of issues but the key ones are, firstly, raising awareness of how many interns there are in Australia and how many of them are not being paid when they legally should be. Secondly, the law currently doesn’t recognise interns and this leads to confusion and quite significant exploitation.Do you possess data or estimates on the total number of interns in Australia?Because internships are such a new phenomenon in Australia, we have no idea how many interns there are. This is something we will work with researchers and other parties to determine in the future. What about the international context, do you identify priorities?Internationally, there needs to be serious recognition of the widespread problem of exploitation within internships and how this impacts individuals, businesses and communities. This isn’t just a problem that affects interns themselves – there are a whole raft of problems and injustices it creates for industry and the community more broadly.How Interns Australia is preparing for the International Interns Day?On the eve of International Interns Day, we are very excited to be launching the National Fair Internship Pledge, which is an Australia-first initiative to recognise fair and quality internships. We will also be releasing the results of our annual survey, which will provide government, law makers and Australians generally some insight into the extent of internships and the challenges they are creating.Could you briefly explain the Fair Internship Pledge project?The National Fair Internship Pledge aims to promote the value and importance of fair and quality internships through providing a seal to distinguish Australia’s best internships. We are launching on 9 November. In developing the Pledge, we have worked very closely with the major employee protection bodies in Australia to determine what a great internship looks like, which means in basic terms, that it is paid at least minimum wage, offers real learning opportunities and outcomes and provides mentoring, support and adequate workplace protections to interns. All companies who sign the NFIP will pay an administration fee and will receive significant promotion from IA. This is both to recognise them for doing a great job of supporting interns but also to provide interns with a clear way of identifying a good internship program.According to your annual survey, what interns vindicate the most and would like the NFIP to address? Almost 80 per cent of interns in Australia believe that all internships should be paid. They believe that the work they are doing is real work that should attract remuneration. On another level, the results also show that a very significant number of internships in Australia may be illegal, and this is something Interns Australia is goingo to address. Annalisa Di Palo

Meet some of the major internship advocacy organizations in the world. Session 1: Génération Précaire - France

Being an intern has become relatively easier during the past few years. With the protection of basic youth labour rights falling outside the coverage of traditional labour unions, collective action has been weaving a growing support network for interns across a number of industrialized countries, often with bearings at legislative level. Repubblica degli Stagisti, catalyst of such action in Italy, has sat down with French movement Génération Précaire, represented by 29-year-old freelancer Vincent Laurent, spokesperson for the past four years, to collect a few background info and updates straight from one of the most exertive youth organization in France. All this while the first ever International Interns Day - with breeding grounds also in US, Canada and Australia - is shaping up and gaining momentum, ready to flare up globally on the 10th of November. How was Génération Précaire born? It was 2005, ten years ago. Back then there was only one person sending out to her mailing lists accounts of her condition of long-standing intern: she was almost 30 at the time and had done 8 internships. The response was huge: hundreds of people shared the same feelings, but wanted to act as well. An appeal to join forces was launched trough the web, availing an upcoming national youth protest, due in October that year. So, after a few months from those first emails, hundreds of interns marched in Paris wearing ghost reminiscent white masks and brought about the very first interns mobilization in the country. For the first time the French government was forced to face the issue of unregulated internships - along with that of Contrat première embauche, Contract of First Employment - which was about to become law.At present how many people work at Génération Précaire?Today the group consists of 10 people, all volunteers, whose main means for providing information and calling for action is the web [official website currently under maintenance, Ed.]. Does it benefit from of any form of funding? It has no funding, all expenses are covered by volunteering. It has no umbrella organization behind it, no union, no joined project. Not even a hierarchy: it's a very democratic movement, with no established structure. Everybody is at the same level, although with different functions.As exponents of the movement you generally use nicknames instead of your real names. Why?That's one way of staying all at the same level. It's also a way to protect interns that want to speak out, through the web or otherwise. For this purpose we also wear masks - white masks - while attending public events. It’s however more a dramatization: interns feel like ghosts in the labour market and consequently dress like ones. How many internships are held in France each year?The French Economic and Social Council counts about 800,000 active internships each year in France. 90% of graduates have done at least one internship during their studies, and 50% of them have done three or more. Internships are a must. Does the distinction between curricular and extracurricular internships apply? Let's define who is an intern in France. An intern is a student of any kind [also enrolled to a training course for unemployed adults: there is no upper age limit, Ed.] who is staying for more than 200 hours and up to 6 months per year in an institution or company. Internships lasting more than 2 months by law must be paid a minimum wage, as established by a law dated 2009 [before the limit had been three months, Ed.], set at 12.5% of the social security cap and subject to periodic revision. Since the beginning of September, salaries have raised from 3.30 to 3.60 euro per hour, so an intern will receive a minimum bonus of 554 euro each month for a full-time internship, instead of the previous 508 euro. On the other hand, internships lasting less than two months can be paid, it’s optional. When you graduate - or generally speaking, finish your studies - you won't be able to do an internship.If an internship is held within a public administration, does the obligation to pay the intern still stand?It does, in any national public administration - city hall, ministry, local bodies and the like - for any interships between 2 and 6 months.What is the most common path of access to the workplace for young people outside education?It's usually a non permanent contract, a contrat de travail à durée determine. That's the rule. They often are really short: one month or two.Does Génération Précaire also deal with employment issue?No, it's just internships for now. I work as a freelance in the field of NGO Communication and personally I am very interested in the issue of freelance contracting regulation. What Génération Précaire thinks is the most urgent internship topic to address in Europe?An urgent topic for Génération Précaire is the issues of unpaid internship in the UN and within European institutions. It has abruptly come to public attention quite recently when an unpaid intern denounced his difficult living conditions in Brussels. We met him three weeks ago, to share our feeling and our thoughts. Génération Précaire will be working to keep raising the issue in Europe, especially in those countries more similar to France, such as Belgium, UK, Germany, Italy, Spain.Annalisa Di Palo

On interns' rights: time to follow through within governmental bodies

During the sleepiest week of the year, the story has been flooding the press all over Europe and beyond, causing an uproar: a 22-year-old New Zealander, David H., unable to sustain himself during an unpaid internship within the United Nations Secretary, has resolved to give up proper housing and live in a tent hitched up on the grounds overlooking Geneva's lake, somewhere in the city's Botanical Garden.Public attention to the story was brought about by the local newspaper Tribune de Géneve, which first broke the story, and fueled by an open statement that the young man, an International Relations graduate, released on Wednesday, drawing a handful of cameras outside UN’s European headquarters. The statement, to which the intern refused to comment on, reads as follows (video here): «I am announcing my resignation from the United Nations’ internship program. I want to make it very clear that the UN did not ask me to leave or pressure me to make this decision in any way. It’s my own decision and I chose to resign because I feel that it would be too difficult to continue to focus on my work as an intern at this stage. I just want to make it clear that no person forced me to sleep in a tent, but rather my circumstances and the conditions for this internship made it the only real possibility that I could see. After graduating I began to apply for jobs, but all I could really find was internships. In every interview, the same questions always came up towards the end: can you afford to fully fund yourself for the duration of this internship? When I answered this with an honest “no”, my application was declined. And so when I applied for this role with the UN I did not fully disclose my financial situation. I said I had enough to support myself but I really didn’t, and I got the job. The UN was clear about their internship policy from the start: no wage or stipend, no transport help, no food allowance, no health assistance. I understood this, and in that regard, I have to take responsibility for accepting the internship in the first place. Call me young and call me idealistic but at the same time, as I have expressed earlier, I do not feel that this is a fair system. At this stage I think the focus needs to move away from me. Interns all over the world need to come together and push for the recognition of our value and the equal rights that we deserve. Because, as the Declaration of Human Rights states so clearly, “everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work. Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration” I hope to see the United Nations becoming a role model for all on the issue of internships in the future». Repubblica degli Stagisti, among the contributors to the European Quality Charter on Internships and Apprenticeships, has often spoken about unpaid internships within European organisations and has recently published an article specifically devoted to UN's contradictions [read "The shame of unpaid internships at the United Nations: the interns protest"], drawing on the last advocacy event that took place on July 18th, precisely in Geneva. Here, according to the local Interns Association, the UN and its agencies employed around 160 interns every year, two thirds of whom were unpaid (data 2013).The story of the young intern living in a tent in the sixth most expensive city in the world, understandbly enough, was shocking to most - catching off guard the protagonist's mother herself - and unleashed a stream of solidarity from all over Europe. Repubblica degli Stagisti has verified the story first-hand and has solid ground to hold that the facts are true and the account given in the statement genuine, despite rumors in the online press stating otherwise. It is however expected to report further on the subject, shedding light on elements which it agreed not to disclose for the time being due to privacy concerns.In the meantime, RdS has agreed to sign a joint press release with some of the world's most involved youth organisations (InternsGoPro, the Brussels Interns NGO, Génération Précaire, Interns Australia, Plattform Generation Praktikum) reporting the story and urging «United Nations member states to introduce and adopt a resolution prohibiting unpaid internships at the UN, thus respecting young people’s right to work and to fair pay while enabling the institution to live up to its ideals of equality and human rights». Indeed, as the brave intern's statement pointed out, it is not about a single case - reason why this newpaper, symbolically, chose not to fully mention his name. Focusing on the sensational story, however appetizing for the media (for a couple of days), would be useless, if not actually detrimental to the shared cause. It is, in fact, an excellent opportunity to renew the interns' cause on the EU political agenda. Political action is what is needed and what the organisations are tenaciously pursuing through synergy and joint action.Repubblica degli Stagisti has suggested to start working at a joint call to the UN which would formally request the adoption of fair working conditions for its interns, as anticipated in the press release, and so far feedbacks from fellow activists have been positive. On the other hand InternsGoPro and the European Youth Forum, the platform of EU non-governmental youth organisations, have agreed upon November 10th as being the date for 2015 International Interns Day, which will most likely take place at the European Parliament in Brussel, backed up by simultaneous events in other European cities (brand new Facebook event here and landing page here). The ambitious goal would be to get at least one UN member state to present a resolution to the European Parliament.Time to change, isn't it?Annalisa Di Palo[Picture © patrick gillièron loprero]

The shame of unpaid internships at the United Nations: the interns protest

More than 200 people, in Brussel only, to support interns’ rights: it’s the European Interns Day organized on Saturday July 18th by 20 NGOs - including InternsGoPro and the European Youth Forum – to draw attention on this issue. Unpaid internships are a worldwide problem and the situation is getting worse thanks to the economic crisis: 60% of the 4.5 million interns in Europe are unpaid and 40% work without a contract. But the most unbelievable fact is that many of these internships are for international organizations like the United Nations. Repubblica degli Stagisti, the most important Italian online newspaper completely dedicated to the defense of interns, has been revealing the inequity of unpaid internships in the non-governmental organizations from many years. We started in 2011 writing about the “black list of international organization”, where internships were unpaid. The article was mentioning the Genève case: already back then, interns were unpaid as in other UN offices, such as Wien and New York. In 2014 RdS wrote about unpaid internships within Italian NGOs: in that case young interns were unpaid, too, while the no profit sector was growing, representing the 6,4% of the Italian economy. On July of the same year RdS wrote about another case: UNCHR in Rome was offering 35euro a month for its interns. The same cost of the bus monthly pass in the city. And it was even in contrast with the Italian law which foresees the obligation to provide a refund for extracurricular internships. The demonstration of July 18th took place also in Genève, among other locations, in Place des Nations, where sixty people, among interns, students, and young professionals, demonstrated asking the UN to provide fairly remunerated quality internships. During the event, organized by the Geneve Interns Association and the Pay Your Interns initiative, young people were showing slogan “Unpaid is unfair” in front of the United Nation Palace. In the city where the headquarters of 32 international organizations are situated, according to a 2013 survey of the European Commission’s Eurobarometer, 67% of trainees are unpaid, making internships accessible only to those who have financial support from their family. That’s why on May 1st, 2015, a group of young interns decided to create the Pay your interns movement, which now has already around 900 supporters on Facebook. It’s a group of students, interns and young professionals of different affiliations, «united by the aim of achieving fairly remunerated quality internships, and hence to give to every young person equal chance to advance in his or her career, regardless of the economic and social background». One of the purpose of the United Nations is to promote worldwide the principles of article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human rights: «everyone who works has the right to just and favorable remuneration». But, it fails to do so within its own organization. And this happens in Geneve, one of the most expensive city in the world, according to the ECA. Surely, the situation has been getting worse due to the economic crisis, which has had a massive impact on international organization and NGO funding. As a result, interns are often hired for positions that require certain expertise, and that in the past would have been filled by paid employees. But something might change, at least for not international organization and NGOs interns, thanks to a petition launched by Francois Leford. A member of Genève’s green party, Leford put forward a local parliamentary motion calling for an end to the abuse of internships. In the petition he’s asking for all interns to be properly paid, from 1,100 chf a month, for those with a bachelor degree, and 2,200 chf for master and higher degrees. Only by stopping unpaid internships, we will be able to help young people facing their future. In the meanwhile, interns have a new help from InternsGoPro, a network of youth-led organizations, whose mission is to promote a new standard for internships. On their website, it is possible to find online ratings of various internship programs, and information such as if an internship, even if unpaid, gives real opportunities to find a job after its conclusion.«The Genève event was very successful» says Matteo De Simone, member of Pay your interns to Repubblica degli Stagisti. «It’s the second public event we have organized and there was a good media attention. Participants were students and university associations. There’s going to be a “Youth initiative day” in October. And in a few weeks we are going to send an open letter to UNS and to general directors with the intention of highlighting our concern with the current organization of the internship programs within the UN».Pay your interns have many concrete proposals they want to submit to UNS, wishing to align the working conditions of interns within the system with the values the UN stands for. Marianna LeporePhotos credits: Antonio Bellotta

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