May Referendum

Should the Union and the University work together to oppose unpaid internships that are longer than 3 weeks?

Proposer name:

Ben Jackson

Idea Title:

Should the Union and the University work together to oppose unpaid internships that are longer than 3 weeks?

What the idea is about:

I believe that both the Union and the University should not use, condone or promote  unpaid internships as fair forms of work experience.

This would mean that no employee or worker of both organisations would be unpaid unless their role is as a volunteer. It would also mean no School, service or department would promote unpaid internships to students at the University of Leeds.

Why have you proposed it?:

For many students and recent graduates opportunities to gain further work experience or professional development is in the form of an unpaid internship.

Organisations who use unpaid internships do so because of the competition and pressure to get ahead of your peers with the aim of furthering your chances in successfully landig a job. These opportunities create an unfair bias in the job market and favour those who may have the finances to support them for a prolonger period of unpaid work. For those who take on such opportunities but have limited finances, a part-time job alogside an internship is often needed. Having the strain of a 40 hour unpaid job, alongide a part-time minimum wage job with abnormal shift patterns can lead to both welfare problems and detrimental affects on ones performance.

Although the long term aim is for organisations and companies to stop using unpaid internships at all, I believe both the Union and Un iversity have a moral obligation to not support, promote or use them.