October 19, 2017 • 38 mins
The term intern comes from the medical community, but virtually every industry now uses them. From real world training to coffee fetchers, interns can be used and misused in many different ways. Dive into the world of internships with us today. And for heaven's sake - pay them!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know Fromhouse Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry and I'm Josh Clark. Uh,
and this is stuff you should Know. Anna turned this
(00:22):
coffee is too hot. You're fired, even though it don't
pay you. Yeah, that's pretty much an average monday for
an intern can be. Man, when I was researching and
when I was reading this, I was like, Okay, this
is interesting, you know, I like all the movie references.
That's great. Um. But then when I did some um
external research too, I was like, whoa this is This
(00:45):
is like a real social issue that we're facing, right,
you know, and it's um, it's like the dirty underbelly
for sure. And it sucks because it seems like there's
a significant portion of millennials who are just strapped with that,
who are saddled with this is just the way that
the career paths have kind of gone. And from doing research,
(01:08):
it's our fault. The gen xers are the first ones
who caved on this, and it just paved the way
for it to be the new normal. Did you ever
do an internship. No, me neither. And it wasn't like
a like when I was in college seventy five years ago.
It wasn't uh that big of a thing. Like, of
course it knew of internships, but like nobody I knew
(01:32):
did one. No, you were basically like a go getter
who was just looking to pad your resume a little bit.
Definitely extracurricular. Yeah, it was not super super common, at
least among the people I knew, and we were all,
you know, just normal, average, smart college students. It wasn't
(01:52):
like hung out with the heads by the dumpster. So
I didn't know about internships. Well that's why I I
didn't know about internship. I'm glad to know that I
wasn't missing out though my mom's made me steer clearer.
Guys like you I saw, I know, and now we
work together. Fates are intertwined. Um, get this check. I
saw the statistic between the nineteen eighties and the mid
(02:15):
two thousand's, the number of the percentage of college graduates
who've done an internship went from between win and win
and the mid two thousands. That's crazy. That underscores what
we were just saying, which is why I threw that
out there, you have data to back it up. Yeah,
(02:38):
and data, by the way, is plural. Okay, I just
want to make sure that that's set out. So like
if I stood up in front of my sympose um
and say I have a lot of datas for this,
I might get left off stage. What symposium are you
talking to? The data's symposium? I want to be there,
all right, I'll put you on the list. Okay, some pretzels.
(03:01):
So this article is just so cute because it opens
with a episode of Friends, which I don't even remember,
and I've seen all those, but apparently Chandler got an
internship and it led to wacky hi jinks. Imagine that, right,
which is also the plot of every other intern movie
or film ever. Yeah, there's one with Robert de Niro
(03:24):
and and Hathaway didn't see it neither. There's one with
Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughan. I saw just a little bit,
just enough of that to know I didn't want to
see it. That was shot here in Atlanta, though. Okay,
so you saw it being filmed and you're like you
and everybody on set heard you. Yeah it was I
think that it was at Google, like real Google, not
(03:44):
made up Google like. I saw a guy the other
day I meant to tell you this, and um, what
city were we just in? Not Lawrence, Kansas but Austin, Texas.
And by the way, thank you to those cities and
all the others on this most recent to yeah, which
we're winding up here in New York in Atlanta soon,
but big shout outs to Lawrence, Kansas especially, love that place. Right.
(04:08):
But anyway, I was in Austin and there was a
group of tech dudes, um in Austin, Yeah, uh, at
this restaurant that I was at, having drinks, and one
of them, the most obnoxious of of the lot, had
a Hoolie shirt on. And Hooly is the fake Google
type company from oh from what's it called Silicon Valley
(04:33):
the TV show. So he had a hoolie shirt and
he was the one leading with all the bad jokes
and I wanted to punch him in the face. I'll
Betty listens to the show too, So you've really made
your point here. Yeah, you know, if you were in
Austin then you had the Hooly shirt, you, sir, have
a punch coming. Yeah, some that guy's listening, he's like, well,
it's not me. My jokes rock Alright, So here's another
(05:00):
stat for you. Um, the two thousand sixteen survey from
the National Association of Colleges and Employers in a c E.
They said more than seventy And this is where it
gets a little like, this is actually good information because
the whole big question is our internships worth doing? Uh?
And they found that more than seventy paid internships did
(05:23):
lead to job offers. So that's pretty good. That's a
good number right there. I actually saw one from two
thousand thirteen and it was at six, so there's an
actual getting better. Yeah, it is getting better, which is
pretty interesting because that means that it's it's it's becoming
I guess, a legitimate career path then, rather than just
(05:45):
a fake career path. Right. But that is to point
out very clearly paid internships, paid unpaid internships, which will
get to which is basically to me, very un ethical,
illegal thing to do. Illegal. Depending on how you're doing it,
you can get away with it, but I think completely unethical.
(06:05):
You should always pay people to work, um, not exposure. Yeah, exactly.
If fewer than forty percent got job offers, from unpaid internships,
and that is not too far above the thirty six
point five percent of people who get a job offer
with no internship at all. Yes, so that two more
(06:27):
two thirteen saw that climb to because it was thirty
seven percent got a job offer versus thirty front who
hadn't intern So it does seem to be having an
impact at least between two thousand thirteen and two thousand
and sixteen, it's been changing. And with unpaid internships in particular,
I've seen that, um there is like a whole mentality
(06:51):
among millennials entering the workforce who are saying, you know what,
I would rather take an unpaid internship in the field
that I want to get into in the hopes of
getting a good job in that field than to start
down a different path in another field that I'm not
feeling so hot about and end up getting trapped in there.
(07:12):
And apparently they are um so dedicated to this idea
that people are starting to take like two three four
unpaid internships in their field in the hopes of making
this work. Part of the problem is is that means
that you're you're you're feeding the gig economy because you're
doing whatever side hustle you can, which a man, I
(07:35):
hate that term so much. Um, Yeah, to pay the
bills because it just makes it so cool. It's like, no,
you're being exploited. That's what it is. A side hustle.
It's exploitation. Okay, So you're having to carry out gigs
to to make ends meet, or you have some other, um,
(07:57):
you know, a low paying job that is not so
demanding that you can't also do your internship at the
same time for parents who will just float you. Right,
that's a big one too. And so if this is
the new career path where you work unpaid internships to
three four of them before you finally get a paying
job and your chosen field, and it makes you, um,
(08:20):
makes you rely on say your parents or whatever. For
people who can't rely on their parents, that means that
that path to chosen career is closed to them. They
have to just start working immediately. And that that means
that it's automatically unfair. So exploitation is leading to unfairness
in in even more sinister ways as well. Yeah, and
(08:41):
that's something that you know what, because of my privilege,
I never thought about. But if you're out there saying, well,
what's a big deal if I want to take an
unpaid internship and my parents gonna float me to do that,
and I get the experience and I get a job, Like,
who am I hurting? And you're screwing up the economy
and your care getting an unfair system for people that
(09:02):
cannot afford to do so you're part of the problem.
And and it's not just you millennials. Calm down, Calm down.
This is this has always been the case with internships,
especially unpaid internships. But internships typically come from connections. So
the more connected you are or your parents are, meaning
(09:24):
the wealthier they are, UM, the the the higher chance
you have of getting a plumb internship and so advancing
along the way. So much so that I was reading
this really good article I would recommend to everybody. UM
it's called the Dream Hoarders, How America's Top perpetuates inequality,
And it was basically saying that you anytime you use
(09:47):
your UM outside channel connections, outside of formal networks, your
connections to get your kid or your nephew or whoever
UM a an internship, you are gaming this system and
making sure that inequality. It just perpetuates on and on
and on. Yeah, cronyism, that's what it's called. Yeah, I
(10:07):
guess so. And nepotism, both both theisms. So let's look
a little bit about the history of the intern. Um.
You need not look any further than the medical community
as to where that comes from, that term, at least
because post w W one, Uh, there was a a
consensus that, like, hey, you went to medical school. That
(10:30):
was fine. You poked around some dead bodies, you maybe
cut a few open, and that's great, you know a lot,
But we don't fully feel great about just releasing you
into the world as a doctor just yet. Maybe you
should tag along and work as an apprentice of sorts,
as a physician in training in a hospital or a
(10:50):
physician's office or whatever, you know, wherever however you're gonna
do this, maybe you should do that. And we're gonna
call them interns. And that's an internship. Uh. They been
doing this for for centuries and centuries. There have been
apprentices where you would learn about a trade, uh, and
then later when when politics came around, um, you could
(11:12):
be an apprentice to a politician and learn about government
jobs and such. But the word intern really comes from medicine.
You could be a sorcerer's apprentice to that. So your
parents would float you, right, Mickey mass his parents were loaded. Um.
At some point, though, some companies started to say, Hey,
(11:36):
I got a great idea. We can actually kind of
formalize this informal thing of like, hey, can you get
um my cousin Biff's kid on this summer as an
intern at your company or at your law firm or whatever. Um, look,
we could formalize it by using our connections with other
prestigious universities. So prestigious company, meet prestigious university, and um,
(12:02):
we will. We want some of your students to come
work here for us for free, for free. We just
want to make sure that's clear. And in return, why
don't you give them like college credit for it? How
about that? And that's when the internship at the time
it was called a co op, but that's when it
really started to develop and spread and catch on. And
(12:24):
I think the earliest one was something like nineteen o
nine at um Northeastern University, which sounds made up so
like from a Jeremy Piven movie or something like that.
But it wasn't until the sixties that it really started
to catch on. Yeah, it sort of started and then
took a bit of a dive in the nineteen sixties,
seventies and obviously eighties and beyond from your stat But again,
(12:46):
as we said, like even even as we're saying like
caught on, like you were not and you were not
in the norm if you got an internship in college,
it was still unusual. But between seventy and eighty three,
the number of university's offering these co ops or internships
I went from two hundred to a thousand, so a
big increase to be sure. Uh, And some people still
(13:08):
say co op, although they're probably like in their seventies.
If they're saying that, all right, then trying to sign hip, um, well,
and there's a bit of a difference actually co ops.
I think usually you would just stop going to school
and take a full time job for a little bit,
like up to a year. It's almost like a work abroad,
(13:28):
but you don't leave. I guess you could leave, whereas
internships usually, like you said, it's like a summer thing
or I'm going to take a semester off and do
this kind of kind of deal. Right, is that right?
I believe so so, um, well, let's take a break, man,
and we'll come back and talk a little bit about
whether not internships are really necessary right after this. Yeah,
(14:12):
all right, So under the banner of this article, do
we need internships? Uh? They can be super useful. Here's
my take on it. If you if you're going for
a science based job in the STEM field, if you
want to be a chemist or a biotechnologist or a
neuroscientist or something, Uh, you want to work in AI
(14:35):
data analysis, you might benefit from an pretty well from
doing an internship. Uh. The same goes with like psychology,
political science, economics, a lot of those fields. It can
be a good way to get your foot in the
door and really learn as like a research in turn
or a laboratory intern Yeah, because I mean when you
(14:58):
when you enter profession, there's a lot of stuff that
are really peculiar to that. Profession has certain jargon. People
tend to work in certain types of groups, They use
certain types of software and you're making good connections they use, right,
they use certain types of um of like equipment, that
kind of stuff, and so like through a formal internship,
(15:19):
a real internship, you can um you can learn quite
a bit and a lot, so much so that, um,
even people who are generally against unpaid internships would say,
if that's the type of internship you're talking about, then
then yes, technically an unpaid internship is acceptable because what
you're getting is such um unrecreatable real world experience, like
(15:45):
real job training, that that that that's value, that's worth
at least as much as you would be paid for
for doing the whatever work they're having you do as well. Yeah,
and this is just me talking here, but my sense
and my experience of talking to people in reading about
this stuff is that internships with like and this is
not across the board, because we have had interns here
(16:07):
not for stuff you should know, but here and how
stuff works. Uh And by all accounts, they obviously were
paid and paid well, but I think in every case
like really enjoyed their time and learned a lot um.
But generally, I think media and entertainment companies are where
you're most likely to be uh exploit, exploited and abused
(16:32):
and get less real world training out of your internship. Yeah,
because the broad statement, but generally true, they're the ones
that are always getting sued by former interns, which is true.
We'll talk about it later and and I think one
of the reasons why is because some of these, especially
like the stem professions or architecture is a really good example. Um.
(16:54):
It has such a long history of internships that there's
like a formal process um that has been established over
the years. So it would be very obvious to any
intern very quickly if they were being exploited instead of
actually being trained in the field that they're looking to
go into. Ye, you're probably You're probably not gonna go
(17:14):
to a science laboratory and have them say, hey, I
need you to take my personal laundry to the cleaners
after work. Probably not, but you will probably get that
from a producer, right exactly. Or go, um, sit in
Selena Gomezs front row seats at this concert because she's
gonna be a little late. Seriously, I've read that one
(17:35):
of the articles. The opening band pretty pretty much they're like, yeah,
that's why you want to look at it. Look your
attitude to go You're gonna go places. That's funny. But yes,
with media companies it's they're kind of like, hey, we
want that too. So I think that they kind of
picked up the slack and started um, you know, twisting
(18:00):
what was initially a good thing into something exploitive. Correct, Well,
what why does Sanita Selena Selena Sanita go manz. What's
her name? Selena? You know, Selena Gomez. Don't like I
take it to someone famous? But why would she need
someone to hold her seat? I wonder that myself signed seat.
(18:21):
I took it. You would think so. But let's say
that there's some riff raff who are like, I'm going
to sit wherever I want. Selena doesn't want to deal
with that. She didn't want to have to come and
be like, excuse me, this very nice, excuse me, you're
in my seat. So in turn, you just go sit there. Yeah,
because she could walk up and be like, intern you
you can go now? Yeah, you better not fart. I
(18:43):
would fart all over that seat she had. She had
the fartiest seat in the joint. It have like those cartoons,
like green like wisps of air coming off of that.
All right, So all getting aside, um, what you want
to do when you get that internship? Though, if you're
looking like some people are just looking for experience, some
people are looking for a job at that company, make
(19:06):
yourself invaluable. Like that's true with whatever, whether it's an
internship or whether it's your job. Yeah, sure, always make
yourself invaluable. But what we want is an intern is
for when you leave, for them to go, crap, Sam's gone,
Like where did Sam go? We had Sam doing all
this great stuff for us. Sam's the real intern, remember
(19:27):
I know, well I was, you know, reminding everybody else
I new. Yeah, well, I think people we might have
said this on the air. Sam who used to send
us our our podcast topic ideas that one summer summer
of Sam and and was the bat boy in one
episode of the Softball episode of our short lived TV show. Yeah,
(19:47):
I ended up writing a letter of recommendation for Sam
for college. He went there and ended up coming back
and interning with How Stuff Works this year, and he
was shoved by nary How Stuff Work staff member. No.
I think Sam had a good time time. He had
a great time, and I could see Sam coming to
work here full time. Yep. I mean that's not a
job offer Sam. I'm not the decider, but it's one
(20:09):
of those things like when Sam or any of our interns,
when they leave, you want people to say, well, what
do we do now, because that means that they have
a good chance at coming back and working. You know,
what does this have to do with Sleena Gomez? Though
I don't know because she's probably never an intern, But
you know who was an intern? Bill Gates? Was he
(20:31):
really where? I don't know? Oprah? Okay, oh you just
got a list, Tom Hanks, Brookshields, Steven Spielberg, Tom Ford,
Spike Lee, tom Ford hunh. Yeah. The fashion industry is
like notorious for exploiting its um. I could see that
so much so that um, there was a I can't
(20:54):
remember the name of the organization but out of Occupy
Wall Street and they were handing out um buttons at
Fashion Week that was saying like pay your interns. I
don't think it went over all that well, I said, VENTI, VENTI, Right.
I wonder how many times that's been screamed? A lot
in a fashion office A lot? Yeah, a fashion office.
(21:19):
Well yeah, fashion office, cow farms. That's my understanding. Um,
all right, Well, let's talk a little bit more about
paid versus unpaid and get real with some stats. So
the n A c E that I was telling you
about earlier in two thousand and sixteen, they did a
Internship and co Op survey report and they said the
(21:40):
hourly wage average for interns undergrad um has been close
to the same for about seven years, at a pretty
good seventeen dollars and sixty nine cents an hour. That's
not bad for an average for a paid internship. I
was surprised by that. I have never made that much
an hour. I wonder what industry is driving that up.
(22:03):
I don't know, because that just doesn't seem that seems
high to me. Maybe us well, I mean, you were
never paid that because the cost of living was like
a third of what it is now and you were
at intern age. I think my first job, I was
a bus boy at JJ's Barbecue in Stone Mountain when
I was thirteen, and I think I think it was
(22:25):
like three thirty five or three seventy five an hour
was the minimum wage. Isn't that crazy? That is so low?
That's gross. You're like, I'm thirteen and I live with
my parents and I can't even live on this. That
was pretty great, Like what thirteen year old was making,
you know, sixty bucks a week. That's a lot for
(22:45):
a thirteen year old. Yeah, in nineteen eighty three, man,
you could have bought a car for sixty bucks in yeah,
at all the band Hala albums I could buy buying
doubles just so I can play frisbee with him. Uh.
So that's paid internships. But as we have been saying, um,
you can get away still with not paying internships. Uh.
(23:08):
There is a six point um bullet point list from
the Fair Labored Uh Fair Labor Standards Act for private
sector for profit businesses. Yeah, because we should point out
that if you're an intern at a nonprofit they have
no problems with this. Legally, you're just a volunteer, right exactly. Okay,
(23:29):
that's a distinction. Yea good good pointing that out. But
private sector for profit you can technically not paying it.
Or here here are the qualifications to meet for unpaid internship.
Number one is internship is similar to training that would
be given in an educational environment. It's boom right there,
(23:51):
that's all you need right there. Yeah, that's the one
that's not met I think most of the time. What's
another one? Another one is that um that the in
the experience has to be for the benefit of the
intern that's a big one. Oh, yeah, that is a
big one. These are all pretty big. Number three, The
intern does not displace regular employees. That is big, but
(24:12):
works under close supervision of existing staff. Right, not like,
go make these knockoff Gucci wallets. Well, here's how you
do it, and then we'll see you at the end
of the summer. Make five hundred of them. Yeah, you
have to run a cell machine. Well, t too bad
because you have to stitch this by hand. What's number four? Uh,
the employer that provides the training, this is weird. Doesn't
(24:36):
get any immediate advantage from the activities of the intern.
And this is my favorite part. And on occasion it's
operations may actually be impeded. Yeah, this is the one
that's probably never adhered to. That's the intern rule. Yeah, yeah,
no immediate advantage. In other words, it has to be
(24:58):
about you giving of yourself to teach the intern, right,
and you're actually putting yourself out by having an intern.
Apparently Gomer Pile is your intern or something like that,
because your operations are impeded. I don't even know if
I fully agree with that one. To be honest, I
love that one though. Uh. Number five, the intern is
not necessarily entitled to a job at the end of
the internship easy enough, and finally the employer and the
(25:20):
intern understand that the intern is not entitled to wages.
So it's just got to be clear. It's not like
after two weeks you're like, so, where's my paycheck? Right like, oh,
we didn't tell you. And this is the way that
things have been for years and years and years. But
then there is this something that happened in two thousand
and eleven and it changed everything, and we're going to
talk about that right after this message. M alright, Chuck.
(26:04):
So I was saying that in two thousand and eleven
things changed a little bit because for years and years,
everybody's just like whatever, everyone knows interns are exploited, free labor,
who cares if they want to do it whatever, um.
But then in two thousand and eleven, two interns stood
up and said no, no, and end to this. Eric
(26:25):
Glott and Alex Footman both worked for Fox Searchlight Pictures,
and I believe they both interned on the film Black Swan,
in particular in New York, and they said, you know what,
this is total b s. We're employees were being worked
like employees were This is not an internship. We're gonna
(26:46):
sue Fox for back wages, and they did. They filed
suit against them, and their whole case was based on
the idea that everything that they had gotten out of
it was the same thing that any entry level employee
would have gotten from it. There was no formal internship whatsoever.
They weren't taught anything. There wasn't like any kind of
(27:06):
vocational training, nothing like that. Um, they were just basically
exploited grunt work. And and like I said, they sued
Fox and they actually won. Yeah, I mean I read
an article called work is work Cohen wy Free internships
are immoral from the Atlantic, and the author said, basically, uh,
there's a good quote. We accept that they are not
(27:27):
salaried because they are temporary, um, because the work is
done by students and not insignificantly for the simple reason
that we choose to call them internships, a position we've
come to consider unpaid. Like by all accounts, these dudes
were p a s right exactly, and they thought so too.
And a judge actually in two thirteen said you know what,
(27:49):
I agree with you. Um. It was in the the
Second Circuit Court of Appeals. The judge said, Yep, these
guys are right. They were employees. You exploited them, you
need to pay that. Um. And he actually came up
with a different set of rules his own test, which
is basically like the exact same thing as the other test. Yeah. Um,
(28:13):
well we'll read through it quickly. Just because it is
a little different. Um, the intern and the employee understand,
there's no expectation of compensation or job guarantee. Provides similar
training to the educational environment. Uh, this one's a little
bit different. It's tied to the interns formal education program
through integrated coursework or academic credit. That is different. That
(28:34):
is significant to Uh. It is aligned with the academic calendar.
That's a little different. And the interns work compliments rather
than displaces paid employees. Yeah right. And but he also
took out something, um, which was that the employer does
not benefit from the internship, which I guess in some
ways at the very least clarifies that. It takes out
(28:56):
what the judge considered was an impossibility. Yeah. Um, and
made it harder for for interns to point to that
and say, no, this is they clearly benefited from it,
but they're going to anyway, I think was the judges point.
So with with Ultimately, Fox settled in two thousand and
sixteen with these two guys, and they have been awarded
(29:21):
four hundred No, I'm sorry, one of them was awarded
and the other one was awarded six thousand dollars in
back pay. And then like, I think night other um
interns from Fox Searchlight at the time who joined the
class action are getting four dollars in back pay each
(29:42):
for them. Yeah, it's the point. And they actually there
were huge ripples that went through the industry, all industries
that involved interns UM and just changed things quite a bit. Well,
I saw were one of them. I don't know if
it was this case, but one of them was appealing
the decision and I read that and I was just like,
are you serious. Yeah. The fact that Fox went for
(30:05):
five years arguing against this and they had to pay
out thirteen five plus another I don't know, five grand,
fifty grand, you're paying these kids to work and do
a good job. Unbelievable. Yeah, it was a little unbelievable.
But again, I think what they were fighting was, no,
we we really like having free interns. We don't want
(30:27):
any of the rules to change. That's ultimately what I
think they were fighting. And because of this lawsuit, the
rules did change, um not with this test that the
judge came up with. Most states still used the original
one that we went over, but a lot of companies
said they're legal counsel said, hey, uh, your your legal
(30:47):
exposure has changed now, so you need to reconsider your
internship programs. Yeah, and that was just one suit. There
was one in two thousand fourteen against Conde Nast where
they paid five point eight million dollars to settle a
class action suit. Hundred interns got together. And this is
like in the fashion world, like you were saying, they
(31:07):
worked for Vogue and Vanity Fair and other magazines like that,
and they refused to pay them like at least minimum wage,
and so they and well is the other one, Viacom, Yeah,
Viacom MTV b ET. They agreed to pay about seven
point two million dollars in two thousand thirteen. MGM paid
(31:29):
about two d and thirty two thousand and earlier this year.
So you know, again, like I was saying, it's like
media and entertainment companies are the ones that seemed to
take the most advantage. So like the all of these lawsuits,
like just it was a huge ripple um and a
lot of places like Conde Nast said we're not doing
interns anymore. It's just it's too much legal exposure. Places
(31:54):
like some places like I think NBC News said we're
gonna pay our interns now um, and that just kind
of it's just like flipping a switch. You know, you
basically have to do one or another. Or there's actually
three things that you could do. You could set up
a formal internship program that like works with you know, universities,
(32:15):
you can start paying your unpaid interns, or you can
just stop your internship program. But the fact that like
these two interns like just changed the entire intern economy
with that initial lawsuit in two thousand and eleven, it's
it's surprising. Yeah, I mean they're just now there. If
they get do away with internships, they're just calling them
(32:37):
entry level jobs. Yeah, and so I guess the differences.
You can't do that as a student probably, right, what
do you mean, well, do that entry level job. You
would have to quit your college probably to do that
in most cases. Uh, yeah, I guess so. But again
there's like there's another way to do it, which is
to actually set up a formal internship program, which is
(32:59):
I think we have here, right, I would guess, so,
I actually don't know. I'm just I would guess just
because we're one of the top hundred most ethical companies
in the world. Yeah, is that a real ranking? Yeah,
I can't remember whereas I think I saw it on
like the side of adulta jet maybe, Yeah, I saw
(33:20):
it somewhere nice or no, my coffee, I've seen it somewhere.
It's definitely a real thing and how stuff works deserves
if you ask me, Yeah, for sure. Uh So, if
you do want to take part in an internship because
it can lead to jobs, We're not pooping internships. We're
poopooing nonpaid ones. We're I'm poopooing the non ideal internships
(33:43):
where you are learning real stuff that is going to
apply to your real career and that you got based
on your merit rather than your parents connections. Yeah, that's
what we're celebrating here. Um So one way to get
these uh internships is to use your parents connection. Well,
it is true though, friends and family and networking, like
(34:04):
that's how you get jobs. It's it's just sort of
the reality of life, you know. Um, your university professor
might can help out contact the business themselves. I remember
Sam sent an email to us and I said great,
And I sent Sam to Tamika here in the office
(34:25):
who handles that stuff, and said, I recommend Sam. And
he got the gig. So it was through a connection
in a way, but it was through a connection he
made by being a go getter and emailing us. Sure
what else you can linked in as a place you
can look? Um, there's something called insurn tips insurn tips.
That's that's a great website name internships dot com. Um
(34:50):
that they called the e Harmony of Internships Media Media Bistro.
Do you ever look on Media Bistro for jobs? No?
I never heard of that one. Oh it's all like
all things like writing and movies and um yeah yeah,
but like you can find lots of internships in there
and on our beloved zip recruiter Chuck Post internship jobs too. Yeah,
(35:14):
that's true. Go out and get one, get get get
a good one, get it in the right way. You
can learn what there's Also I also ran across some stuff.
Um there's like a whole community of unpaid interns intern Nation, um,
and they've kind of come up with like blogs to
just commiserate with one another. There's fashion intern problems is
(35:38):
one of them, Anonymous Production assistant blog, and intern anonymous.
Because there are three three good ones to start. I
think the last two are mostly associated with like um
production stuff out in Hollywood. Yeah, but in all seriousness,
if you're being exploited for real or taking advantage of
a real I know it's probably hard to speak up
(35:59):
because you think like you're in there, you don't want
to cause trouble. But be brave and blow that whistle.
That's what I say. You're just ruined like five kids
lives or made them better. Yeah. Well, thanks for listening everybody.
This is a tough one right now. Right, Uh, let's see.
If you want to know more about internships, you can
(36:20):
type that word into the search bar at how stuff
first dot com. And since I said that, it's time
for listening to me, I'm gonna call the Secret Service.
It was a good one. Just listen to Secret Service
guys want to fill you in on a missing piece.
You're joking a little bit about why there weren't younger,
more agile Secret Service agents out there protecting the president.
(36:41):
But that's a really important there's a really important reason
for that, uh, that you would need to be older
and more experienced. In a former job, I used to
interact with the security team who had been the presidential
protective detail in the White House. They were the most
stoic and tight lipped people I've ever met. Uh I
can imagine, you know. But one of them did occasionally
(37:03):
tell the story about a time where there was a
credible threat when their team had to respond quickly. The
upshot of the story was that in order to do
their jobs, they had to take charge of the president,
which meant getting him in a car rerouting the motorcade
against his will. It's basically like, it doesn't matter what
the president saying. Supersede that the president was furious and
(37:23):
tried to order him to change course, but it later
came out that the threat had been real. The decisive
action had probably saved the president's life. I don't know
many seven year old who would have the cajones. This
is what Anonymous says. Did they use J yeah, oh,
good going, anonymous instead of what an H yeah yeah
(37:44):
spelled correctly? The cajones to stand up to a direct
order from a sitting president or who would have enough
experience to be able to convince the leader of the
free world to shut up and get in the car.
Don't forget the Presidential Protective Detail is responsible to save
the president's life, which sometimes means saving it from his
or her own bad judgment or ignorance. I love to
(38:05):
all anonymous. Way to go Anonymous, and also way to
go with that or her edition This person. This person
is right up our alley. If you want to get
in touch with this, like Anonymous did, you can join
us on Twitter at s y s K podcast or
Josh I'm Clark. Me and Chuck are both on Facebook
and at Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know.
(38:27):
You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast, to
how stuff Works dot com and as always, joined us
our at home on the whim Stuff you Should Know
dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is that how Stuff Works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know Fromhouse Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry and I'm Josh Clark. Uh,
and this is stuff you should Know. Anna turned this
(00:22):
coffee is too hot. You're fired, even though it don't
pay you. Yeah, that's pretty much an average monday for
an intern can be. Man, when I was researching and
when I was reading this, I was like, Okay, this
is interesting, you know, I like all the movie references.
That's great. Um. But then when I did some um
external research too, I was like, whoa this is This
(00:45):
is like a real social issue that we're facing, right,
you know, and it's um, it's like the dirty underbelly
for sure. And it sucks because it seems like there's
a significant portion of millennials who are just strapped with that,
who are saddled with this is just the way that
the career paths have kind of gone. And from doing research,
(01:08):
it's our fault. The gen xers are the first ones
who caved on this, and it just paved the way
for it to be the new normal. Did you ever
do an internship. No, me neither. And it wasn't like
a like when I was in college seventy five years ago.
It wasn't uh that big of a thing. Like, of
course it knew of internships, but like nobody I knew
(01:32):
did one. No, you were basically like a go getter
who was just looking to pad your resume a little bit.
Definitely extracurricular. Yeah, it was not super super common, at
least among the people I knew, and we were all,
you know, just normal, average, smart college students. It wasn't
(01:52):
like hung out with the heads by the dumpster. So
I didn't know about internships. Well that's why I I
didn't know about internship. I'm glad to know that I
wasn't missing out though my mom's made me steer clearer.
Guys like you I saw, I know, and now we
work together. Fates are intertwined. Um, get this check. I
saw the statistic between the nineteen eighties and the mid
(02:15):
two thousand's, the number of the percentage of college graduates
who've done an internship went from between win and win
and the mid two thousands. That's crazy. That underscores what
we were just saying, which is why I threw that
out there, you have data to back it up. Yeah,
(02:38):
and data, by the way, is plural. Okay, I just
want to make sure that that's set out. So like
if I stood up in front of my sympose um
and say I have a lot of datas for this,
I might get left off stage. What symposium are you
talking to? The data's symposium? I want to be there,
all right, I'll put you on the list. Okay, some pretzels.
(03:01):
So this article is just so cute because it opens
with a episode of Friends, which I don't even remember,
and I've seen all those, but apparently Chandler got an
internship and it led to wacky hi jinks. Imagine that, right,
which is also the plot of every other intern movie
or film ever. Yeah, there's one with Robert de Niro
(03:24):
and and Hathaway didn't see it neither. There's one with
Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughan. I saw just a little bit,
just enough of that to know I didn't want to
see it. That was shot here in Atlanta, though. Okay,
so you saw it being filmed and you're like you
and everybody on set heard you. Yeah it was I
think that it was at Google, like real Google, not
(03:44):
made up Google like. I saw a guy the other
day I meant to tell you this, and um, what
city were we just in? Not Lawrence, Kansas but Austin, Texas.
And by the way, thank you to those cities and
all the others on this most recent to yeah, which
we're winding up here in New York in Atlanta soon,
but big shout outs to Lawrence, Kansas especially, love that place. Right.
(04:08):
But anyway, I was in Austin and there was a
group of tech dudes, um in Austin, Yeah, uh, at
this restaurant that I was at, having drinks, and one
of them, the most obnoxious of of the lot, had
a Hoolie shirt on. And Hooly is the fake Google
type company from oh from what's it called Silicon Valley
(04:33):
the TV show. So he had a hoolie shirt and
he was the one leading with all the bad jokes
and I wanted to punch him in the face. I'll
Betty listens to the show too, So you've really made
your point here. Yeah, you know, if you were in
Austin then you had the Hooly shirt, you, sir, have
a punch coming. Yeah, some that guy's listening, he's like, well,
it's not me. My jokes rock Alright, So here's another
(05:00):
stat for you. Um, the two thousand sixteen survey from
the National Association of Colleges and Employers in a c E.
They said more than seventy And this is where it
gets a little like, this is actually good information because
the whole big question is our internships worth doing? Uh?
And they found that more than seventy paid internships did
(05:23):
lead to job offers. So that's pretty good. That's a
good number right there. I actually saw one from two
thousand thirteen and it was at six, so there's an
actual getting better. Yeah, it is getting better, which is
pretty interesting because that means that it's it's it's becoming
I guess, a legitimate career path then, rather than just
(05:45):
a fake career path. Right. But that is to point
out very clearly paid internships, paid unpaid internships, which will
get to which is basically to me, very un ethical,
illegal thing to do. Illegal. Depending on how you're doing it,
you can get away with it, but I think completely unethical.
(06:05):
You should always pay people to work, um, not exposure. Yeah, exactly.
If fewer than forty percent got job offers, from unpaid internships,
and that is not too far above the thirty six
point five percent of people who get a job offer
with no internship at all. Yes, so that two more
(06:27):
two thirteen saw that climb to because it was thirty
seven percent got a job offer versus thirty front who
hadn't intern So it does seem to be having an
impact at least between two thousand thirteen and two thousand
and sixteen, it's been changing. And with unpaid internships in particular,
I've seen that, um there is like a whole mentality
(06:51):
among millennials entering the workforce who are saying, you know what,
I would rather take an unpaid internship in the field
that I want to get into in the hopes of
getting a good job in that field than to start
down a different path in another field that I'm not
feeling so hot about and end up getting trapped in there.
(07:12):
And apparently they are um so dedicated to this idea
that people are starting to take like two three four
unpaid internships in their field in the hopes of making
this work. Part of the problem is is that means
that you're you're you're feeding the gig economy because you're
doing whatever side hustle you can, which a man, I
(07:35):
hate that term so much. Um, Yeah, to pay the
bills because it just makes it so cool. It's like, no,
you're being exploited. That's what it is. A side hustle.
It's exploitation. Okay, So you're having to carry out gigs
to to make ends meet, or you have some other, um,
(07:57):
you know, a low paying job that is not so
demanding that you can't also do your internship at the
same time for parents who will just float you. Right,
that's a big one too. And so if this is
the new career path where you work unpaid internships to
three four of them before you finally get a paying
job and your chosen field, and it makes you, um,
(08:20):
makes you rely on say your parents or whatever. For
people who can't rely on their parents, that means that
that path to chosen career is closed to them. They
have to just start working immediately. And that that means
that it's automatically unfair. So exploitation is leading to unfairness
in in even more sinister ways as well. Yeah, and
(08:41):
that's something that you know what, because of my privilege,
I never thought about. But if you're out there saying, well,
what's a big deal if I want to take an
unpaid internship and my parents gonna float me to do that,
and I get the experience and I get a job, Like,
who am I hurting? And you're screwing up the economy
and your care getting an unfair system for people that
(09:02):
cannot afford to do so you're part of the problem.
And and it's not just you millennials. Calm down, Calm down.
This is this has always been the case with internships,
especially unpaid internships. But internships typically come from connections. So
the more connected you are or your parents are, meaning
(09:24):
the wealthier they are, UM, the the the higher chance
you have of getting a plumb internship and so advancing
along the way. So much so that I was reading
this really good article I would recommend to everybody. UM
it's called the Dream Hoarders, How America's Top perpetuates inequality,
And it was basically saying that you anytime you use
(09:47):
your UM outside channel connections, outside of formal networks, your
connections to get your kid or your nephew or whoever
UM a an internship, you are gaming this system and
making sure that inequality. It just perpetuates on and on
and on. Yeah, cronyism, that's what it's called. Yeah, I
(10:07):
guess so. And nepotism, both both theisms. So let's look
a little bit about the history of the intern. Um.
You need not look any further than the medical community
as to where that comes from, that term, at least
because post w W one, Uh, there was a a
consensus that, like, hey, you went to medical school. That
(10:30):
was fine. You poked around some dead bodies, you maybe
cut a few open, and that's great, you know a lot,
But we don't fully feel great about just releasing you
into the world as a doctor just yet. Maybe you
should tag along and work as an apprentice of sorts,
as a physician in training in a hospital or a
(10:50):
physician's office or whatever, you know, wherever however you're gonna
do this, maybe you should do that. And we're gonna
call them interns. And that's an internship. Uh. They been
doing this for for centuries and centuries. There have been
apprentices where you would learn about a trade, uh, and
then later when when politics came around, um, you could
(11:12):
be an apprentice to a politician and learn about government
jobs and such. But the word intern really comes from medicine.
You could be a sorcerer's apprentice to that. So your
parents would float you, right, Mickey mass his parents were loaded. Um.
At some point, though, some companies started to say, Hey,
(11:36):
I got a great idea. We can actually kind of
formalize this informal thing of like, hey, can you get
um my cousin Biff's kid on this summer as an
intern at your company or at your law firm or whatever. Um, look,
we could formalize it by using our connections with other
prestigious universities. So prestigious company, meet prestigious university, and um,
(12:02):
we will. We want some of your students to come
work here for us for free, for free. We just
want to make sure that's clear. And in return, why
don't you give them like college credit for it? How
about that? And that's when the internship at the time
it was called a co op, but that's when it
really started to develop and spread and catch on. And
(12:24):
I think the earliest one was something like nineteen o
nine at um Northeastern University, which sounds made up so
like from a Jeremy Piven movie or something like that.
But it wasn't until the sixties that it really started
to catch on. Yeah, it sort of started and then
took a bit of a dive in the nineteen sixties,
seventies and obviously eighties and beyond from your stat But again,
(12:46):
as we said, like even even as we're saying like
caught on, like you were not and you were not
in the norm if you got an internship in college,
it was still unusual. But between seventy and eighty three,
the number of university's offering these co ops or internships
I went from two hundred to a thousand, so a
big increase to be sure. Uh, And some people still
(13:08):
say co op, although they're probably like in their seventies.
If they're saying that, all right, then trying to sign hip, um, well,
and there's a bit of a difference actually co ops.
I think usually you would just stop going to school
and take a full time job for a little bit,
like up to a year. It's almost like a work abroad,
(13:28):
but you don't leave. I guess you could leave, whereas
internships usually, like you said, it's like a summer thing
or I'm going to take a semester off and do
this kind of kind of deal. Right, is that right?
I believe so so, um, well, let's take a break, man,
and we'll come back and talk a little bit about
whether not internships are really necessary right after this. Yeah,
(14:12):
all right, So under the banner of this article, do
we need internships? Uh? They can be super useful. Here's
my take on it. If you if you're going for
a science based job in the STEM field, if you
want to be a chemist or a biotechnologist or a
neuroscientist or something, Uh, you want to work in AI
(14:35):
data analysis, you might benefit from an pretty well from
doing an internship. Uh. The same goes with like psychology,
political science, economics, a lot of those fields. It can
be a good way to get your foot in the
door and really learn as like a research in turn
or a laboratory intern Yeah, because I mean when you
(14:58):
when you enter profession, there's a lot of stuff that
are really peculiar to that. Profession has certain jargon. People
tend to work in certain types of groups, They use
certain types of software and you're making good connections they use, right,
they use certain types of um of like equipment, that
kind of stuff, and so like through a formal internship,
(15:19):
a real internship, you can um you can learn quite
a bit and a lot, so much so that, um,
even people who are generally against unpaid internships would say,
if that's the type of internship you're talking about, then
then yes, technically an unpaid internship is acceptable because what
you're getting is such um unrecreatable real world experience, like
(15:45):
real job training, that that that that's value, that's worth
at least as much as you would be paid for
for doing the whatever work they're having you do as well. Yeah,
and this is just me talking here, but my sense
and my experience of talking to people in reading about
this stuff is that internships with like and this is
not across the board, because we have had interns here
(16:07):
not for stuff you should know, but here and how
stuff works. Uh And by all accounts, they obviously were
paid and paid well, but I think in every case
like really enjoyed their time and learned a lot um.
But generally, I think media and entertainment companies are where
you're most likely to be uh exploit, exploited and abused
(16:32):
and get less real world training out of your internship. Yeah,
because the broad statement, but generally true, they're the ones
that are always getting sued by former interns, which is true.
We'll talk about it later and and I think one
of the reasons why is because some of these, especially
like the stem professions or architecture is a really good example. Um.
(16:54):
It has such a long history of internships that there's
like a formal process um that has been established over
the years. So it would be very obvious to any
intern very quickly if they were being exploited instead of
actually being trained in the field that they're looking to
go into. Ye, you're probably You're probably not gonna go
(17:14):
to a science laboratory and have them say, hey, I
need you to take my personal laundry to the cleaners
after work. Probably not, but you will probably get that
from a producer, right exactly. Or go, um, sit in
Selena Gomezs front row seats at this concert because she's
gonna be a little late. Seriously, I've read that one
(17:35):
of the articles. The opening band pretty pretty much they're like, yeah,
that's why you want to look at it. Look your
attitude to go You're gonna go places. That's funny. But yes,
with media companies it's they're kind of like, hey, we
want that too. So I think that they kind of
picked up the slack and started um, you know, twisting
(18:00):
what was initially a good thing into something exploitive. Correct, Well,
what why does Sanita Selena Selena Sanita go manz. What's
her name? Selena? You know, Selena Gomez. Don't like I
take it to someone famous? But why would she need
someone to hold her seat? I wonder that myself signed seat.
(18:21):
I took it. You would think so. But let's say
that there's some riff raff who are like, I'm going
to sit wherever I want. Selena doesn't want to deal
with that. She didn't want to have to come and
be like, excuse me, this very nice, excuse me, you're
in my seat. So in turn, you just go sit there. Yeah,
because she could walk up and be like, intern you
you can go now? Yeah, you better not fart. I
(18:43):
would fart all over that seat she had. She had
the fartiest seat in the joint. It have like those cartoons,
like green like wisps of air coming off of that.
All right, So all getting aside, um, what you want
to do when you get that internship? Though, if you're
looking like some people are just looking for experience, some
people are looking for a job at that company, make
(19:06):
yourself invaluable. Like that's true with whatever, whether it's an
internship or whether it's your job. Yeah, sure, always make
yourself invaluable. But what we want is an intern is
for when you leave, for them to go, crap, Sam's gone,
Like where did Sam go? We had Sam doing all
this great stuff for us. Sam's the real intern, remember
(19:27):
I know, well I was, you know, reminding everybody else
I new. Yeah, well, I think people we might have
said this on the air. Sam who used to send
us our our podcast topic ideas that one summer summer
of Sam and and was the bat boy in one
episode of the Softball episode of our short lived TV show. Yeah,
(19:47):
I ended up writing a letter of recommendation for Sam
for college. He went there and ended up coming back
and interning with How Stuff Works this year, and he
was shoved by nary How Stuff Work staff member. No.
I think Sam had a good time time. He had
a great time, and I could see Sam coming to
work here full time. Yep. I mean that's not a
job offer Sam. I'm not the decider, but it's one
(20:09):
of those things like when Sam or any of our interns,
when they leave, you want people to say, well, what
do we do now, because that means that they have
a good chance at coming back and working. You know,
what does this have to do with Sleena Gomez? Though
I don't know because she's probably never an intern, But
you know who was an intern? Bill Gates? Was he
(20:31):
really where? I don't know? Oprah? Okay, oh you just
got a list, Tom Hanks, Brookshields, Steven Spielberg, Tom Ford,
Spike Lee, tom Ford hunh. Yeah. The fashion industry is
like notorious for exploiting its um. I could see that
so much so that um, there was a I can't
(20:54):
remember the name of the organization but out of Occupy
Wall Street and they were handing out um buttons at
Fashion Week that was saying like pay your interns. I
don't think it went over all that well, I said, VENTI, VENTI, Right.
I wonder how many times that's been screamed? A lot
in a fashion office A lot? Yeah, a fashion office.
(21:19):
Well yeah, fashion office, cow farms. That's my understanding. Um,
all right, Well, let's talk a little bit more about
paid versus unpaid and get real with some stats. So
the n A c E that I was telling you
about earlier in two thousand and sixteen, they did a
Internship and co Op survey report and they said the
(21:40):
hourly wage average for interns undergrad um has been close
to the same for about seven years, at a pretty
good seventeen dollars and sixty nine cents an hour. That's
not bad for an average for a paid internship. I
was surprised by that. I have never made that much
an hour. I wonder what industry is driving that up.
(22:03):
I don't know, because that just doesn't seem that seems
high to me. Maybe us well, I mean, you were
never paid that because the cost of living was like
a third of what it is now and you were
at intern age. I think my first job, I was
a bus boy at JJ's Barbecue in Stone Mountain when
I was thirteen, and I think I think it was
(22:25):
like three thirty five or three seventy five an hour
was the minimum wage. Isn't that crazy? That is so low?
That's gross. You're like, I'm thirteen and I live with
my parents and I can't even live on this. That
was pretty great, Like what thirteen year old was making,
you know, sixty bucks a week. That's a lot for
(22:45):
a thirteen year old. Yeah, in nineteen eighty three, man,
you could have bought a car for sixty bucks in yeah,
at all the band Hala albums I could buy buying
doubles just so I can play frisbee with him. Uh.
So that's paid internships. But as we have been saying, um,
you can get away still with not paying internships. Uh.
(23:08):
There is a six point um bullet point list from
the Fair Labored Uh Fair Labor Standards Act for private
sector for profit businesses. Yeah, because we should point out
that if you're an intern at a nonprofit they have
no problems with this. Legally, you're just a volunteer, right exactly. Okay,
(23:29):
that's a distinction. Yea good good pointing that out. But
private sector for profit you can technically not paying it.
Or here here are the qualifications to meet for unpaid internship.
Number one is internship is similar to training that would
be given in an educational environment. It's boom right there,
(23:51):
that's all you need right there. Yeah, that's the one
that's not met I think most of the time. What's
another one? Another one is that um that the in
the experience has to be for the benefit of the
intern that's a big one. Oh, yeah, that is a
big one. These are all pretty big. Number three, The
intern does not displace regular employees. That is big, but
(24:12):
works under close supervision of existing staff. Right, not like,
go make these knockoff Gucci wallets. Well, here's how you
do it, and then we'll see you at the end
of the summer. Make five hundred of them. Yeah, you
have to run a cell machine. Well, t too bad
because you have to stitch this by hand. What's number four? Uh,
the employer that provides the training, this is weird. Doesn't
(24:36):
get any immediate advantage from the activities of the intern.
And this is my favorite part. And on occasion it's
operations may actually be impeded. Yeah, this is the one
that's probably never adhered to. That's the intern rule. Yeah, yeah,
no immediate advantage. In other words, it has to be
(24:58):
about you giving of yourself to teach the intern, right,
and you're actually putting yourself out by having an intern.
Apparently Gomer Pile is your intern or something like that,
because your operations are impeded. I don't even know if
I fully agree with that one. To be honest, I
love that one though. Uh. Number five, the intern is
not necessarily entitled to a job at the end of
the internship easy enough, and finally the employer and the
(25:20):
intern understand that the intern is not entitled to wages.
So it's just got to be clear. It's not like
after two weeks you're like, so, where's my paycheck? Right like, oh,
we didn't tell you. And this is the way that
things have been for years and years and years. But
then there is this something that happened in two thousand
and eleven and it changed everything, and we're going to
talk about that right after this message. M alright, Chuck.
(26:04):
So I was saying that in two thousand and eleven
things changed a little bit because for years and years,
everybody's just like whatever, everyone knows interns are exploited, free labor,
who cares if they want to do it whatever, um.
But then in two thousand and eleven, two interns stood
up and said no, no, and end to this. Eric
(26:25):
Glott and Alex Footman both worked for Fox Searchlight Pictures,
and I believe they both interned on the film Black Swan,
in particular in New York, and they said, you know what,
this is total b s. We're employees were being worked
like employees were This is not an internship. We're gonna
(26:46):
sue Fox for back wages, and they did. They filed
suit against them, and their whole case was based on
the idea that everything that they had gotten out of
it was the same thing that any entry level employee
would have gotten from it. There was no formal internship whatsoever.
They weren't taught anything. There wasn't like any kind of
(27:06):
vocational training, nothing like that. Um, they were just basically
exploited grunt work. And and like I said, they sued
Fox and they actually won. Yeah, I mean I read
an article called work is work Cohen wy Free internships
are immoral from the Atlantic, and the author said, basically, uh,
there's a good quote. We accept that they are not
(27:27):
salaried because they are temporary, um, because the work is
done by students and not insignificantly for the simple reason
that we choose to call them internships, a position we've
come to consider unpaid. Like by all accounts, these dudes
were p a s right exactly, and they thought so too.
And a judge actually in two thirteen said you know what,
(27:49):
I agree with you. Um. It was in the the
Second Circuit Court of Appeals. The judge said, Yep, these
guys are right. They were employees. You exploited them, you
need to pay that. Um. And he actually came up
with a different set of rules his own test, which
is basically like the exact same thing as the other test. Yeah. Um,
(28:13):
well we'll read through it quickly. Just because it is
a little different. Um, the intern and the employee understand,
there's no expectation of compensation or job guarantee. Provides similar
training to the educational environment. Uh, this one's a little
bit different. It's tied to the interns formal education program
through integrated coursework or academic credit. That is different. That
(28:34):
is significant to Uh. It is aligned with the academic calendar.
That's a little different. And the interns work compliments rather
than displaces paid employees. Yeah right. And but he also
took out something, um, which was that the employer does
not benefit from the internship, which I guess in some
ways at the very least clarifies that. It takes out
(28:56):
what the judge considered was an impossibility. Yeah. Um, and
made it harder for for interns to point to that
and say, no, this is they clearly benefited from it,
but they're going to anyway, I think was the judges point.
So with with Ultimately, Fox settled in two thousand and
sixteen with these two guys, and they have been awarded
(29:21):
four hundred No, I'm sorry, one of them was awarded
and the other one was awarded six thousand dollars in
back pay. And then like, I think night other um
interns from Fox Searchlight at the time who joined the
class action are getting four dollars in back pay each
(29:42):
for them. Yeah, it's the point. And they actually there
were huge ripples that went through the industry, all industries
that involved interns UM and just changed things quite a bit. Well,
I saw were one of them. I don't know if
it was this case, but one of them was appealing
the decision and I read that and I was just like,
are you serious. Yeah. The fact that Fox went for
(30:05):
five years arguing against this and they had to pay
out thirteen five plus another I don't know, five grand,
fifty grand, you're paying these kids to work and do
a good job. Unbelievable. Yeah, it was a little unbelievable.
But again, I think what they were fighting was, no,
we we really like having free interns. We don't want
(30:27):
any of the rules to change. That's ultimately what I
think they were fighting. And because of this lawsuit, the
rules did change, um not with this test that the
judge came up with. Most states still used the original
one that we went over, but a lot of companies
said they're legal counsel said, hey, uh, your your legal
(30:47):
exposure has changed now, so you need to reconsider your
internship programs. Yeah, and that was just one suit. There
was one in two thousand fourteen against Conde Nast where
they paid five point eight million dollars to settle a
class action suit. Hundred interns got together. And this is
like in the fashion world, like you were saying, they
(31:07):
worked for Vogue and Vanity Fair and other magazines like that,
and they refused to pay them like at least minimum wage,
and so they and well is the other one, Viacom, Yeah,
Viacom MTV b ET. They agreed to pay about seven
point two million dollars in two thousand thirteen. MGM paid
(31:29):
about two d and thirty two thousand and earlier this year.
So you know, again, like I was saying, it's like
media and entertainment companies are the ones that seemed to
take the most advantage. So like the all of these lawsuits,
like just it was a huge ripple um and a
lot of places like Conde Nast said we're not doing
interns anymore. It's just it's too much legal exposure. Places
(31:54):
like some places like I think NBC News said we're
gonna pay our interns now um, and that just kind
of it's just like flipping a switch. You know, you
basically have to do one or another. Or there's actually
three things that you could do. You could set up
a formal internship program that like works with you know, universities,
(32:15):
you can start paying your unpaid interns, or you can
just stop your internship program. But the fact that like
these two interns like just changed the entire intern economy
with that initial lawsuit in two thousand and eleven, it's
it's surprising. Yeah, I mean they're just now there. If
they get do away with internships, they're just calling them
(32:37):
entry level jobs. Yeah, and so I guess the differences.
You can't do that as a student probably, right, what
do you mean, well, do that entry level job. You
would have to quit your college probably to do that
in most cases. Uh, yeah, I guess so. But again
there's like there's another way to do it, which is
to actually set up a formal internship program, which is
(32:59):
I think we have here, right, I would guess, so,
I actually don't know. I'm just I would guess just
because we're one of the top hundred most ethical companies
in the world. Yeah, is that a real ranking? Yeah,
I can't remember whereas I think I saw it on
like the side of adulta jet maybe, Yeah, I saw
(33:20):
it somewhere nice or no, my coffee, I've seen it somewhere.
It's definitely a real thing and how stuff works deserves
if you ask me, Yeah, for sure. Uh So, if
you do want to take part in an internship because
it can lead to jobs, We're not pooping internships. We're
poopooing nonpaid ones. We're I'm poopooing the non ideal internships
(33:43):
where you are learning real stuff that is going to
apply to your real career and that you got based
on your merit rather than your parents connections. Yeah, that's
what we're celebrating here. Um So one way to get
these uh internships is to use your parents connection. Well,
it is true though, friends and family and networking, like
(34:04):
that's how you get jobs. It's it's just sort of
the reality of life, you know. Um, your university professor
might can help out contact the business themselves. I remember
Sam sent an email to us and I said great,
And I sent Sam to Tamika here in the office
(34:25):
who handles that stuff, and said, I recommend Sam. And
he got the gig. So it was through a connection
in a way, but it was through a connection he
made by being a go getter and emailing us. Sure
what else you can linked in as a place you
can look? Um, there's something called insurn tips insurn tips.
That's that's a great website name internships dot com. Um
(34:50):
that they called the e Harmony of Internships Media Media Bistro.
Do you ever look on Media Bistro for jobs? No?
I never heard of that one. Oh it's all like
all things like writing and movies and um yeah yeah,
but like you can find lots of internships in there
and on our beloved zip recruiter Chuck Post internship jobs too. Yeah,
(35:14):
that's true. Go out and get one, get get get
a good one, get it in the right way. You
can learn what there's Also I also ran across some stuff.
Um there's like a whole community of unpaid interns intern Nation, um,
and they've kind of come up with like blogs to
just commiserate with one another. There's fashion intern problems is
(35:38):
one of them, Anonymous Production assistant blog, and intern anonymous.
Because there are three three good ones to start. I
think the last two are mostly associated with like um
production stuff out in Hollywood. Yeah, but in all seriousness,
if you're being exploited for real or taking advantage of
a real I know it's probably hard to speak up
(35:59):
because you think like you're in there, you don't want
to cause trouble. But be brave and blow that whistle.
That's what I say. You're just ruined like five kids
lives or made them better. Yeah. Well, thanks for listening everybody.
This is a tough one right now. Right, Uh, let's see.
If you want to know more about internships, you can
(36:20):
type that word into the search bar at how stuff
first dot com. And since I said that, it's time
for listening to me, I'm gonna call the Secret Service.
It was a good one. Just listen to Secret Service
guys want to fill you in on a missing piece.
You're joking a little bit about why there weren't younger,
more agile Secret Service agents out there protecting the president.
(36:41):
But that's a really important there's a really important reason
for that, uh, that you would need to be older
and more experienced. In a former job, I used to
interact with the security team who had been the presidential
protective detail in the White House. They were the most
stoic and tight lipped people I've ever met. Uh I
can imagine, you know. But one of them did occasionally
(37:03):
tell the story about a time where there was a
credible threat when their team had to respond quickly. The
upshot of the story was that in order to do
their jobs, they had to take charge of the president,
which meant getting him in a car rerouting the motorcade
against his will. It's basically like, it doesn't matter what
the president saying. Supersede that the president was furious and
(37:23):
tried to order him to change course, but it later
came out that the threat had been real. The decisive
action had probably saved the president's life. I don't know
many seven year old who would have the cajones. This
is what Anonymous says. Did they use J yeah, oh,
good going, anonymous instead of what an H yeah yeah
(37:44):
spelled correctly? The cajones to stand up to a direct
order from a sitting president or who would have enough
experience to be able to convince the leader of the
free world to shut up and get in the car.
Don't forget the Presidential Protective Detail is responsible to save
the president's life, which sometimes means saving it from his
or her own bad judgment or ignorance. I love to
(38:05):
all anonymous. Way to go Anonymous, and also way to
go with that or her edition This person. This person
is right up our alley. If you want to get
in touch with this, like Anonymous did, you can join
us on Twitter at s y s K podcast or
Josh I'm Clark. Me and Chuck are both on Facebook
and at Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know.
(38:27):
You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast, to
how stuff Works dot com and as always, joined us
our at home on the whim Stuff you Should Know
dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is that how Stuff Works dot com.
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Josh Clark
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