By his measure, he’d be making $3,280 before tax if he was paid minimum wage for his labour. Instead, he’s shelling out cash for the opportunity – gas alone for the commute costs about $100 a week.
There are no guarantees of employment once his internship is complete, either.
“I feel in some ways I’m a cat that’s trying to catch a mouse,” he says.
He says he hopes his performance as a producer over the course of the internship will wow his superiors enough to spawn a job offer, which is what happened to a few of his peers.
Because the internship is a diploma requirement for Humber College’s journalism program, he doesn’t expect CTV to pay him.
“Humber is holding my diploma up in the air and saying we’re not giving it to you till you do this.”
Instead of putting employers on the hook, the government should offer subsidies to interns, he says.
In Mr. Perlin’s critical analysis of the unpaid internship circuit, he places blame in part on schools for promoting such opportunities. He cites one survey that found 95 per cent of postsecondary institutions in the United States allowed ads for unpaid internships to be posted on campus.
“They need to be shamed into fulfilling their responsibility and protecting their students,” he says.
Jonathan Nguyen landed his summer stint with a Toronto advertising firm through the internship program at the media and information studies program at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ont.
He’ll earn half a credit by the time the gig is done, but no cash.
In keeping with a trend toward millennials living at home with their parents, Mr. Nguyen is staying with his family this summer. Statistics Canada data suggest 31 per cent of Gen-Xers lived with their parents in their 20s, while 51 per cent of Gen-Yers do now. In Mr. Nguyen’s case, he simply can’t afford a place of his own in Toronto without a salary. After two years of university, he’s already $25,000 in debt.
The hour-and-a-half commute costs him another $400 a month, but the firm is covering his transportation expenses.
Some companies offer interns honorariums – sometimes just a few hundred dollars – to reward them for their work. But others avoid any form of compensation as it can be construed as payment that entitles the intern to “employee” status, explains David Doorey, a professor of employment law at Toronto’s York University.
“My sense is that many employers believe simply calling someone an ‘intern’ relieves them of all employment obligations,” he says in an e-mail. In many cases, interns are completing the same work as paid staff – an obvious boon for employers.
In keeping with Ontario’s Employment Standards Act, unless the training program is a degree or diploma requirement, “odds are the ‘intern’ is really an employee” – and thus should be paid, he says.
But Toronto employment lawyer David Ertl says interns fall into a grey zone.
“At the end of the day, interns should be compensated. Whether this is minimum wage, I can’t say,” he says. Some employers could argue that a foot in the door and valuable experience is compensation enough, he says.
Mr. Nguyen says he’d much rather do unpaid work at the ad firm this summer than get paid to do labour that wouldn’t help his long-term career goals.
“I tell my friends who make fun of me and say, ‘Oh I’ll buy you this because you can’t afford it,’ I say, ‘Well … I’m getting paid in the experience. I’m getting paid in knowledge. I’m getting paid in connections.’ ”
