Lack of government data on internships leaves policymakers in the dark

In the Media

Lawsuit: Interns provided free labor, worked menial tasks
About half of the nation’s internships are unpaid, said Ross Eisenbrey, vice president for the Economic Policy Institute, aWashington, D.C., think tank. Internships should provide training similar to what students are offered at a school, according to the U.S. Labor Department.
The Labor Department has received few complaints about this, a spokeswoman said.
But Eisenbrey said that’s because most interns are afraid to complain when they’re just starting out. The institute discussed these questionable internships at a recent forum with a Labor Department regulator, who said the agency is too understaffed to adequately monitor this.
Baltimore Sun | May 15, 2012
Jobs Few, Grads Flock to Unpaid Internships
“A few years ago you hardly heard about college graduates taking unpaid internships,” said Ross Eisenbrey, a vice president at the Economic Policy Institute who has done several studies on interns. “But now I’ve even heard of people taking unpaid internships after graduating from Ivy League schools.”
Matt Gioe had little luck breaking into the music and entertainment industry after graduating with a philosophy degree from Bucknell last year. To get hands-on experience, he took an unpaid position with a Manhattan talent agency that booked musical acts. He said he answered phones and looked up venues. Although he was sometimes told to make bookings, he said he received virtually no guidance on how to strike a deal or how much to charge. But the boss did sometimes ask him to run errands like buying groceries.
“It was basically three wasted months,” he said.
Mr. Eisenbrey said many companies were taking advantage of the weak labor market to use unpaid interns to handle chores like photocopying or running errands once done by regular employees, which can raise sticky legal questions.
The New York Times | May 7, 2012
Should Apple Take Responsibility For Concerns Over Its Chinese Labor Practices?
Many groups, including the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), are speaking out against Apple claiming it should take full responsibility.
“Apple is certainly to blame because Apple is in control of the situation,” Ross Eisenbrey, the Vice President of the Economic Policy Institute, said to WebProNews.
The EPI, along with Students and Scholars against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM), the Workers Rights Consortium, and others, recently held a forum to raise awareness of these issues. Their research, as Eisenbrey explained to us, found that Foxconn’s Chinese factory employees work 60-70 hours per week, are exposed to dangerous chemicals, experience explosions from uncontrolled aluminum dust, and are under a military-style of management.
WebProNews | April 20, 2012
Unpaid internships create uneven playing field for all
Collegiate Times | April 17, 2012