hey julia, good morning!
i understand your argument; can i ask two things which seem to follow on
from your reasoning; i ask this without cynicism, really just trying to
understand your thinking:
- how/how much does your organisation pay interns? (or what would you
say how much interns should be paid, ethically?)
- because of the discrimination and social imbalance that unpaid
internships create, would you say that, if they cannot be paid, then
they should not be offered/advertised at all? and, in order to put a
brake on the advantages of those who are wealthy anyway, do you think
that even when potential interns offer to do the internship for free,
they should not be allowed this?
i think that one issue that has not been discussed in the thread is in
how far internships are "work"; in my experience, in many cases, they
are: the moment that the organisation begins to depend on this being
done - whatever the intern does -, rather than just observe and
practice, it is work; however, i have also been in situations where the
effort of guiding the intern was equivalent to the benefit of the work
they were doing, so in that case there was a quid-pro-quo...
regards,
-a
Am 27.08.15 um 13:00 schrieb Julia Pelta Feldman:
> Andreas, I certainly agree that unpaid internships can be valuable
> experiences - indeed, they seem to have become a necessary step for entry
> into the art world, making them *in*valuable.
>
> The problem is that this experience is only available to those who can
> afford to work for free - as you yourself point out. And since it is
> difficult to get serious paid work without unpaid internships on one's
> resume, this system tends to create a class of art workers who are (to a
> greater or lesser extent) independently wealthy. This is not only terribly
> unfair, but also conducive to a kind of homogeneity that has negative
> consequences for the whole system. (Don't we want to encourage a variety of
> backgrounds and perspectives?)
>
> Simply put, when internships are not paid, then the hiring criterion is no
> longer about merit but about money. That is why they are unethical.
>
> Best, J.
>
>
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