Everyone deserves to be paid for the work they do, including interns. Fight for a fair wage for the interns at your company.
Claire is an organizer and designer based in Chicago. In the past year and a half she's worked on a mayoral, congressional and presidential race where she helped unionize a top-tier presidential campaign. She believes collective action leads to more informed citizens and a healthier society.
Our current policy of hosting unpaid internships is limiting our ability to support people of diverse backgrounds from joining our company. Unpaid internships favor individuals who can be supported by other means and this results in a limited applicant pool. We fundamentally believe that interns’ work is contributing to our company's function and taking their labor for free is antithetical to our beliefs.
Unpaid internships pose a significant burden on the intern who supplies their labor, digital connectivity and transportation for free to the [Company] . On average, an unpaid summer internship amounts to an investment by the interns of over $6,000. Any work that is deemed important enough for our organization to be overseeing should be paid work, or no work at all. It’s time we stop this practice that favors the privileged few who can subsidize internships on their own dollar.