The Real Road to Serfdom

Once upon a time, an “intern” was something like a doctor-in-training. Then sometime — was it the mid 1980s? — somebody got the bright idea of creating summer “internships” for college students. Companies got some free or cheap work, college students got some experience to put on their résumés. OK so far.

Unfortunately the “intern” racket has grown into something like indentured servitude. Internships are no longer a summer vacation phenomenon, but year round, and the people expected to fill the internships are no longer students, but graduates. I keep an eye out for writer’s jobs, and it seems these days what used to be entry-level paid positions are now almost always unpaid internships, often of undetermined length. It’s a ripoff, but what are you going to do? As long as somebody is willing to give labor away for free, companies will expect it.

Now I’ve learned the unpaid labor scam has been cranked up another notch. Apparently there’s a new phenomenon called “prelancing.” As I understand it, prelancing is for out-of-work people who already have too much job experience to benefit from putting an “internship” on their résumés. Otherwise, it seems to work like an internship — an individual is asked to give away labor in order to be considered for a paying job sometime in the future.

A 30-something laid off former technology manager wrote about his “prelancing” experience for the Wall Street Journal. As you might expect from the Wall Street Journal, the guy actually is excited about the opportunity to “bolster my résumé” and create “positive change where it is needed” by doing unpaid work as a consultant in Silicon Valley. What a tool.

Just wait — the next step will be that “interns” and “prelancers” will be expected to pay fees to the companies for the “experience.” At least sharecroppers got a shack to live in and a plot for growing vegetables.

22 thoughts on “The Real Road to Serfdom

  1. Wow. Professionals working for free hoping it will lead to work. Negotiating a salary when a job is offered will be interesting, and it puts deflationary pressure on all salaries. I see it having some benefits in terms of networking to find suitable open positions or for re-training.

    I have had interns working on the same team at tech companies. Our interns were paid and had subsidized housing coops with other interns. Education level varied from undergrad to ABD. Pay was below market, but enough that interns could to pay bills, have some fun and save.

  2. I’m an out of work teacher and have even considered donating my work to some worthy cause. But it seems only fair that the beneficiary of my work should be able to at least cover my subsistence expenses.

  3. Sounds like indentured servitude which reminds me that the on-and-off hoopla to get rid of the estate tax would herald in the return of entailment which kept estates intact under one heir at death. We’re definitely going backwards to the good old days of serfdom, desease, and undeserved/unearned wealth and title.

  4. We’ll get to the next step when the prelancers are no longer able to work due to hunger or illness or an inability to house themselves. Then we’ll get back company towns and company stores, and our journey to the dark side will be complete.

  5. In education we have a similar thing, only called “student teaching”. The student teacher pays for the experience, in terms of tuition to the college they attend. Contact with the supervising teacher ranges from a mentor relationship to, “see you in three months”. I’ve long advocated for a year long, paid internship to replace many of the truly meaningless education classes. Superintendents and principals have not caught on to using them as a money saving endeavor because most of the students are truly awful at teaching. You really don’t get a clue about the job until you’ve been doing it full time for a few years, and some not even then. There’s really no room for someone to just make copies or pour coffee.

  6. It does sound like it is going backwards. This phenomenen could be lumped with the union busting attempts. People forget how important unions were in the early days.

  7. I think Jon Gray is a tad misguided if he thinks his talents( offered for free) are going to be appreciated in a capitalistic environment . He might find a more fertile ground to cultivate true appreciation in the missions field. God loves a cheerful giver, but corporate America will suck the life out of you and toss you to the side without any trace of appreciation when they are done with you.

  8. Internship programs in non-medical settings go back into the 1970s at least, if not earlier. In 1976 I did an internship in the Pediatrics Playroom (for a degree in Recreational Therapy). I even paid for the experience since the academic program I was in at NYU required two internships for the degree.

    Last summer the non-profit I used to work for had two interns in the development department. It wouldn’t surprise me if they have replaced me with an intern. My former boss kept saying that “she is so brilliant, so smart” when referring to an intern. I really began to dislike my boss.

  9. Sometime in the mid-80s the category of the “sessional” became entrenched in post-secondary education. In ways, this was an attempt on the part of regular faculty to create some work when little was to be had (for example in English Departments). Over time much of the teaching of entry – level courses in writing and composition has been pawned off on faculty that work contractually from term to term. It would (just from an institutional vantage) make sense to either be hiring full faculty by now (though the economy has turned sour and hence limited the budgets) or at least rethink the category. Think of the professionalization of writing (both academic/technical and creative) – doctorate programs in composition studies/rhetoric abound, but even specialists in the area get shafted when they are restricted to teaching how to edit for a comma splice. This is more than the teaching writing/literature divide. There is something about the teaching of writing (and by extension the writer) that has become diminished in these cynical times – something similar to the second-class status of the writing intern.

  10. Wow, you’d think the Ayn Rand crowd would be screaming their heads off over this. No man (sic) should be expected to sacrifice his good for the good of another. I mean, if their “philosophy” has any consistency at all….

    Oh… right.

  11. I don’t do resumes anymore but from 1990-2002 I wrote over 7,000 of them, and tens of thousands of cover letters. I’m also a former union steward with strong opinions about employment practices. Prelancing, like the exploitation of interns, is a heinous practice that should be forbidden by law.

    But until it is, it’s one of your best strategies for securing employment in a job market that’s at rock bottom. The use of such strategies should involve as much research as possible, and it should be clear that the employer will be able to hire you once you’ve “proven” yourself.

    This is why I don’t write resumes anymore, or counsel job seekers. Encouraging people to exploit themselves isn’t a job I much cared for, but it doesn’t mean these strategies don’t work. In an economy where jobs are impossibly scarce it would behoove us all not to question the strategies of others. Your coworker two cubicles down is orally gratifying the department manager? Sounds like they’ve got better job security than you.

    Except for the insanely hard right, no one questions a Holocaust survivor on what they had to do to survive. This job market may not be a Holocaust, but given the consequences of unemployment in a country where the feds are starving the states, I don’t think we can really criticize anyone for any decision they make, especially if they’re trying to support a family.

    Prelancing is an obscenity, but so are all the other job hunting strategies that work in this kind of market.

  12. Gee, do the prelancers even get to show up at the company’s offices and drink the coffee, or do they have to pay for that, too? Any opportunity to score some office supplies? Use the fax machine?

    Sheesh, even when my friends help me move, there’s at least a promise of pizza involved.

  13. More than 20 years ago, there was a business in the college town I lived in that routinely “hired” interns to do ad work for them. The terms were 3 months work and then you were hired with pay. Inevitably, the intern was out on his/her ear at the end of the period and a new free intern took their place. Nothing new about this despicable practice taking advantage of the hopeful and desperate.

  14. It wasn’t that long ago that many (most notably ‘good’ christians) believed that the poor were poor because they were innately immoral or had led immoral lives and god was punishing them by making them poor – which of course means that the rich are moral and god’s reward is evidenced by their wealth.

    Sounds bizarro, but I submit that the belief or some interpretation of the belief still exists – not to mention that it fits so well with the agenda of and the rationalizations of the economic royalists (capitalist class) among us.

  15. About 20 years ago, someone I knew was trying to get an intern position at a law firm. I was astonished that he had to buy a rather pricey lunch for several people working there. The history of this sort of ripoff goes back further than that I’m sure.

  16. I am a free-lance photographer who can hear the tone of voice and see the body language in the person who is expecting free work from me. My husband, an architect, recently delivered a proposal for and addition to a building to a person who was expecting it to come in the form of free drawings. It’s happening all over.

  17. Quinta — yeah, writers are supposed to work for free too. We’re told getting published for free is good publicity, but publicity for what? So we can get published for free even more?

  18. prople now days want something for nothing i hate people like this ‘ thiis will continue to happen untill we go back to union s bonnie.

  19. My guess is the guy sees it as an opportunity to add consultant to his resume. I am sure he will leave out the unpaid part….. that or the company has a policy of feeding it’s employees.. he could be there for the food if he isn’t making any money.

  20. s — yeah, I’m sure he’s doing this because he thinks it will help him get a paying job eventually. But I’m saying employers are starting to milk this and are exploiting people.

    I used to work in a very small company for a woman who regularly got free graphic design and other work by asking for “sample” work, which she then used without paying the freelancers. She also used to take advantage of technical support companies that offered one month free service in hopes of getting a contract. When the free month was up she’d just move on to someone else offering a month free service in hopes of getting a contract. No one ever got the contract.

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