Many people think that unpaid internships are a good thing.  That’s to be expected with any cultural norm, as was once slavery, women’s suffrage and black segregation. Internships are indeed an American institution, rooted not just in decades of evolution, among which exists a culture of free labor, but also in centuries of Apprenticeship and its role as a foundation for individual prosperity and our collective economic vitality.

In a perfect world – at the micro-economic level – [unpaid] internships can be a very good thing. But they are not all created equal.  However, in the big picture, – at the macroeconomic level – they become extremely detrimental.How?

“The Case for Intern Compensation” directly correlates with a number of interrelated issues including – but not limited to – college affordability and accessibility; graduate conversion rates and matriculation duration; equal opportunity employment and social stratification; the reduced accessibility to adequate student loans and the related immediate and long-term debt burden; and abusive practices by businesses to leverage free labor as an alternative to what might otherwise be paid job opportunities for unemployed workers. So this issue impacts a much greater “Internship Eco-System” and diminishes our ability to harness the full power of internships to fulfill the promise of American Youth to revitalize our economy and America’s global competitiveness.

We address all of these issues and more in our Intern Bill of Rights and Proposed Reforms, published at PayInterns.com Whether here or there, I’d love to hear what you think!

I wholeheartedly invite you to PayInterns.com. Exercise your First Amendment rights. Endorse the “Petition to Abolish Unpaid Internships.”  Lending your voice will help to ratify our “Intern Bill of Rights and Proposed Reforms.”

The goal is to gather at least 100,000 signatures by July 4, and declare Intern Independence.  Our success can be greatly enhanced if you spread the word among those in your social network.

Together we can make our pen mightier to remedy injustice.

POST-SCRIPT: At first blush, one might assume that abolition would be counter-intuitive to fostering opportunity for students and employers. To the contrary, our Proposed Reforms take a sensible, phased approach to actualize societal and systemic change with an emphasis on stimulating opportunity, not stifling it.

While we abhor unpaid internships, we must acknowledge the necessity to balance our call for universal pay with the achieveability of that goal.  This injustice cannot fully be rectified overnight, especially in light of our current economic climate. But that should not delay the initiation and progress of meaningful reform, which will take considerable time.