Resisting Unpaid Internships
By It’s good to see Europeans following their American comrades and resisting unpaid internships. I thought this quote was a pretty good example of why internships need to be governed by conventional labor law.
Saxon Baird, 29, a freelance journalist based in Brooklyn, says he has already completed six internships. “Only one internship really paid an amount that I could scrape by on,” Mr. Baird said: “In places like Vogue, I was getting paid $12 a day and working 25 to 30 hours a week. So, while that was technically a paid internship, it might as well not have been.”
He said that his internship at Vogue included some perks — like invites to celebrity parties and a few bylines — but he spent a large amount of time running errands, and acting as a substitute for a salaried employee.
But you know, a poor start up like Vogue magazine, how could they afford to pay minimum wage?