Interns: Exploited Labor (Or Petulant Whiners)

I. Phoebe Maltz Bovy examines the unpaid intern and distills much of what has been written about unpaid interns to this: “Interns who complain about not getting paid are often not understood as exploited labor, but as petulant whiners; bratty if they expect their parents to support them, but equally bratty if they ask their bosses to pay them.”

II. In Dissent, Madeleine Schwartz looks to history to see what can be done; she finds parallels between “women’s work” and the Wages for Housework movement of the 1970s and the fight for pay to interns now (and more than parallels — “According to one study by Intern Bridge, a research and consulting firm, more than three in four unpaid interns were women”).

III. More unpaid intern stories are right here.

IV. I’m not going to illustrate this post with a picture of Lauren Conrad, because: See I.

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