Fashion industry internships: exploitation or experience?

[Fontenrose]

NY Times, April 2, 2010
Growth of Unpaid Internships May Be Illegal, Officials Say

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

With job openings scarce for young people, the number of unpaid internships has climbed in recent years, leading federal and state regulators to worry that more employers are illegally using such internships for free labor.
Convinced that many unpaid internships violate minimum wage laws, officials in Oregon, California and other states have begun investigations and fined employers. Last year, M. Patricia Smith, then New York’s labor commissioner, ordered investigations into several firms’ internships. Now, as the federal Labor Department’s top law enforcement official, she and the wage and hour division are stepping up enforcement nationwide.
Many regulators say that violations are widespread, but that it is unusually hard to mount a major enforcement effort because interns are often afraid to file complaints. Many fear they will become known as troublemakers in their chosen field, endangering their chances with a potential future employer.
The Labor Department says it is cracking down on firms that fail to pay interns properly and expanding efforts to educate companies, colleges and students on the law regarding internships.
“If you’re a for-profit employer or you want to pursue an internship with a for-profit employer, there aren’t going to be many circumstances where you can have an internship and not be paid and still be in compliance with the law,” said Nancy J. Leppink, the acting director of the department’s wage and hour division.
Ms. Leppink said many employers failed to pay even though their internships did not comply with the six federal legal criteria that must be satisfied for internships to be unpaid. Among those criteria are that the internship should be similar to the training given in a vocational school or academic institution, that the intern does not displace regular paid workers and that the employer “derives no immediate advantage” from the intern’s activities — in other words, it’s largely a benevolent contribution to the intern.
No one keeps official count of how many paid and unpaid internships there are, but Lance Choy, director of the Career Development Center at Stanford University, sees definitive evidence that the number of unpaid internships is mushrooming — fueled by employers’ desire to hold down costs and students’ eagerness to gain experience for their résumés. Employers posted 643 unpaid internships on Stanford’s job board this academic year, more than triple the 174 posted two years ago.
In 2008, the National Association of Colleges and Employers found that 83 percent of graduating students had held internships, up from 9 percent in 1992. This means hundreds of thousands of students hold internships each year; some experts estimate that one-fourth to one-half are unpaid.
In California, officials have issued guidance letters advising employers whether they are breaking the law, while Oregon regulators have unearthed numerous abuses.
“We’ve had cases where unpaid interns really were displacing workers and where they weren’t being supervised in an educational capacity,” said Bob Estabrook, spokesman for Oregon’s labor department. His department recently handled complaints involving two individuals at a solar panel company who received $3,350 in back pay after claiming that they were wrongly treated as unpaid interns.
Many students said they had held internships that involved noneducational menial work. To be sure, many internships involve some unskilled work, but when the jobs are mostly drudgery, regulators say, it is clearly illegal not to pay interns.
One Ivy League student said she spent an unpaid three-month internship at a magazine packaging and shipping 20 or 40 apparel samples a day back to fashion houses that had provided them for photo shoots.
At Little Airplane, a Manhattan children’s film company, an N.Y.U. student who hoped to work in animation during her unpaid internship said she was instead assigned to the facilities department and ordered to wipe the door handles each day to minimize the spread of swine flu.
Tone Thyne, a senior producer at Little Airplane, said its internships were usually highly educational and often led to good jobs.
Concerned about the effect on their future job prospects, some unpaid interns declined to give their names or to name their employers when they described their experiences in interviews.
While many colleges are accepting more moderate- and low-income students to increase economic mobility, many students and administrators complain that the growth in unpaid internships undercuts that effort by favoring well-to-do and well-connected students, speeding their climb up the career ladder.
Many less affluent students say they cannot afford to spend their summers at unpaid internships, and in any case, they often do not have an uncle or family golf buddy who can connect them to a prestigious internship.
Brittany Berckes, an Amherst senior who interned at a cable news station that she declined to identify, said her parents were not delighted that she worked a summer unpaid.
“Some of my friends can’t take these internships and spend a summer without making any money because they have to help pay for their own tuition or help their families with finances,” she said. “That makes them less competitive candidates for jobs after graduation.”
Of course, many internships — paid or unpaid — serve as valuable steppingstones that help young people land future jobs. “Internships have become the gateway into the white-collar work force,” said Ross Perlin, a Stanford graduate and onetime unpaid intern who is writing a book on the subject. “Employers increasingly want experience for entry-level jobs, and many students see the only way to get that is through unpaid internships.”
Trudy Steinfeld, director of N.Y.U.’s Office of Career Services, said she increasingly had to ride herd on employers to make sure their unpaid internships were educational. She recently confronted a midsize law firm that promised one student an educational $10-an-hour internship. The student complained that the firm was not paying him and was requiring him to make coffee and sweep out bathrooms.
Ms. Steinfeld said some industries, most notably film, were known for unpaid internships, but she said other industries were embracing the practice, seeing its advantages.
“A few famous banks have called and said, ‘We’d like to do this,’ ” Ms. Steinfeld said. “I said, ‘No way. You will not list on this campus.’ ”
Dana John, an N.Y.U. senior, spent an unpaid summer at a company that books musical talent, spending much of her days photocopying, filing and responding to routine e-mail messages for her boss.
“It would have been nice to be paid, but at this point, it’s so expected of me to do this for free,” she said. “If you want to be in the music industry that’s the way it works. If you want to get your foot in the door somehow, this is the easiest way to do it. You suck it up.”
The rules for unpaid interns are less strict for non-profit groups like charities because people are allowed to do volunteer work for non-profits.
California and some other states require that interns receive college credit as a condition of being unpaid. But federal regulators say that receiving college credit does not necessarily free companies from paying interns, especially when the internship involves little training and mainly benefits the employer.
Many employers say the Labor Department’s six criteria need updating because they are based on a Supreme Court decision from 1947, when many apprenticeships were for blue-collar production work.
Camille A. Olson, a lawyer based in Chicago who represents many employers, said: “One criterion that is hard to meet and needs updating is that the intern not perform any work to the immediate advantage of the employer. In my experience, many employers agreed to hire interns because there is very strong mutual advantage to both the worker and the employer. There should be a mutual benefit test.”
Kathyrn Edwards, a researcher at the Economic Policy Institute and co-author of a new study on internships, told of a female intern who brought a sexual harassment complaint that was dismissed because the intern was not an employee.
“A serious problem surrounding unpaid interns is they are often not considered employees and therefore are not protected by employment discrimination laws,” she said.



comments

[Katie123]

in england, at least in fashion, it's almost an urban legend to get paid in internships. NO ONE does, and everyone expects to be asked to make coffee, stay in the fashion closet etc.

in every single internship i've done so far, you go to the interview and the person explains what you have to do and makes it sound all so interesting and in the end you have to sweep floors and make tea and occasionally do something that you feel is productive.

in the one i am right now i've become everything but the person's nanny but she isn't intending on paying me any time soon. i mean, why would she? if i leave, there's a queue of people lining up outside willing to do my position for free. that's why internships in places like vogue uk are so short. 2, maybe 3 weeks. they're not going to give you any responsibility, maybe the occasional courier job, run to fetch coffee etc. by the time you start getting tired of it and thinking you're much too good for that, your time is done and some other eager fashion student takes your place.

another thing that is important to notice as well is how elitist fashion is in terms of internships. again, at least in the uk, they're all unpaid and the longer you stay there, the best (for your CV and for your 'learning')...so people that need to work part time for a living don't stand a chance compared to wealthy or international students.

[lucy92]

i hope each state government crack down on this practice. it displaces workers.

[CharlottefromCA]

yeah its just soo true, it gives preference to students who are independently wealthy, to those who do not need to work (for $$$) to pay for rent, food, etc..

[chichina]

Internships are just something to put on your CV to show that you are so passionate about the career that you are willing to work for free. I think they're ideal for college students really, when you have some time off, to use it productively.
I did an internship at a newspaper, it was ok, they let me write some things and they would ask for my input. They offered to pay for the cost of my lunches and my travel costs as well.

[Luda]

My internship was totally illegal. I ended up designing 8 garments which she used in her collection and I didn't get paid a cent, I didn't even get a thankyou. She wouldn't write on my school report that I designed them because she said I didn't design them well, so I just showed them the email to prove it.

[Mathewthew]

It's so true, A lots of designer in US , UK, Paris didn't pay as I've heard from my frd......
But that's how it works....sadly

[tigerrouge]

In some places, employers get paid to take such people on, so it works out even better for them. They can make a clear profit from hiring such people, with no obligation to pay for anything.

[TREVOFASHIONISTO]

I know most internships in NY are unpaid but they do offer stipends sometimes
so you can buy lunch or pay for your way there

[Virlly]

I was visiting the Bussiness Of Fashion website, when I came accross with this article. I found it really interesting, as I just finished an internship at McQueen myself, and I am so happy to find that someone finally reported this situation.
I have only been interning in UK, so I don't know how the situation is in other places, I just hope it's a bit more 'legal' everywhere else.
So I would like to know what you think about it, if it is just a UK thing, and
how is possible that some big fashion houses behave this way, and they still don't have huge profits.

From http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010...dustry-interns

Fashion industry internships: exploitation or experience?
The haute couture world may be glamorous, but some interns at the gritty end of the business are being exploited in their quest to gain industry experience, says Jamie Elliott

Some UK fashion companies are exploiting unpaid interns who sometimes work 12 hours or more a day for months on end with little prospect of a paid job afterwards. Fashion interns say they often outnumber paid staff and claim some companies rely heavily on free labour.
A few months after completing a postgraduate degree in fashion, 25-year-old Rufus Cassidy* took up an unpaid internship with top fashion house Alexander McQueen.
"Most days I worked from 8.30 in the morning until at least 2am," he says. "We usually worked seven days a week and some of the interns got really tired because of the hours."
Cassidy also claims the company relied on interns to carry out core work. "In the pattern making department there were 10 interns and only five paid staff. In embroidery there was just one designer and 10 interns."
In May last year, after eight months of unpaid work, he quit. "I left because it was obvious there was virtually no chance of getting a job there," he says. "They would have been happy for me to continue, but I just couldn't afford to go on working for nothing. I had already done five unpaid fashion internships elsewhere."
Employment law expert Timothy Brennan QC says companies who use interns in the way described by Cassidy could be breaking national minimum wage rules.
"The most important thing as far as the minimum wage is concerned is what the real arrangement is, not whether someone is called an intern or not," Brennan says. "If someone is engaged on a regular basis for an extended period of time to sew sequins on to ball gowns or similar work, which is a core part of a clothing manufacturer's operation, then that person may well be considered an employee or worker and would be entitled to the minimum wage."
Interns at Alexander McQueen are asked to sign an agreement which includes an opt-out from working time regulations which limit the working week to 48 hours. The agreement states that this opt-out can be withdrawn by the intern at any time, on giving three months' written notice. It also says interns "must obey all reasonable instructions that we give you and work such hours as are necessary to properly complete the tasks you are asked to undertake".
Brennan says this agreement suggests the company's interns are, in fact, "workers", and therefore due the minimum wage.
"In the absence of any other material, I would be fairly confident of persuading an employment tribunal that someone who actually worked under a contract on these terms was a worker," he says. "You don't need to contract out of the working time regulations if you are not a worker. If you are within working time regulations because you are a worker, you are within the national minimum wage as a worker."
In a statement, Alexander McQueen told Guardian Work it was confident that it treats its interns in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations. They said that "Alexander McQueen has had immensely positive feedback from its great many interns. Assuming that you have spoken to two or three interns, that represents a tiny minority of those who have passed through AMQ's scheme. The critical issues that your sources have raised are completely out of line with the overwhelming majority of interns."
The hours Cassidy was expected to work by the company may also breach other provisions of the working time regulations.
"In my view, the long hours you describe break working time regulations which say there must be at least 11 hours' rest within any 24-hour period and that every adult worker must have a break of not less that 24 hours in each seven-day period," says David McBride, an employment lawyer with Thompsons Solicitors.
Alexander McQueen's lawyers told Work: "The fashion industry is by no means unique in requiring on occasions those who work in it to undertake long hours." Prospective interns, they added, were "fully informed about the nature of the work they are asked to do," and any intern was "well aware of the purpose of the internship and that there was no guarantee of a job at the end of it". Those who participated gained "invaluable experience", and enhanced their CVs and career prospects.
They also said interns were involved as closely as possible with both the culture, the working practices and the highly skilled activities of the company, that they were closely supervised and were provided with work which was "not only suitable to them, but which also will provide them with the best opportunities to learn".
Periods of intense activity were periodic only, they insisted, such as in the run-up to collections. "The working hours of interns in the run-up to shows where our client is exhibiting collections must be seen in the context of the fact that all of our client's staff work long hours on these occasions – which is normal in the fashion industry," the statement said. When such hours were required, they added, interns were provided with food and taxis home and offered days off to compensate.
Alexander McQueen also denied that interns were expected to carry out core work. They described the claim that interns formed a large part of the workforce in the pattern-making and embroidery departments as "untrue and incredible" and pointed out that such assertions "betrayed a complete ignorance of Alexander McQueen's employee structure", which includes a substantial design team in London supplemented by several freelance technicians and about 60 employees in Italy, and a number of subcontractors who undertake creative and production tasks.
Alexander McQueen is not alone in the fashion world in attracting criticism. Former interns and staff at a number of other fashion companies claim that long hours and excessive expectations can place intense pressure on young staff.
"The designer was constantly shouting at students as young as 19, saying, 'You're ****ing useless, you don't know what you're doing,' whenever they didn't do something properly," says a former manager at a small but well-known fashion house which relies heavily on interns. "These girls would be working from 8am to 1am in the run-up to fashion week and some would start crying and getting hysterical because they were being expected to do a job perfectly which they'd never done before."
Impossible expectations

For some, it gets too much. "I have seen people quit because it's such a stressed atmosphere," says a former intern with a larger fashion company. "If you haven't been able to finish something on time, they keep pushing you saying, 'The designer wants it now,' even when you say it's impossible."
Former interns Work has spoken to at another company claim they were exposed to harmful chemicals. "We had to use a toxic liquid to artificially rust metal," one says. "I got nosebleeds after using it and other students did too. At first we used this chemical in a normal room with no special ventilation, but after a week, when everyone had been getting nose bleeds, they told us to work outside on the balcony even though it was freezing cold."
A former fashion student who was an intern with the same company, but at a different time, adds: "The liquid we had to use to age metal caused us to get skin infections. One girl was affected so badly she had to go to hospital and take time off."
Dr Emanuele Lugli, a lecturer at the Istituto Marangoni fashion and design school, says young people put up with these conditions because internships have become essential for anyone who wants a career in the industry.
"Students are constantly telling me how companies are staffing entire departments with interns who work incredibly long hours and are put under enormous pressure," he says. "But they still want to do internships at these places because they are desperate for the experience and to work for these big-name brands."
However, designer Anna Heinrup, a successful fashion consultant, points out that interns can play an important and mutually beneficial role in helping fledgling designers off the ground.
"Some start-ups depend on interns to survive," she explains. "And when I was an intern I had better experiences in small companies because I felt I had more responsibility and could make a real difference."
But not all her experiences were positive. "I worked for one designer for three months where the interns did everything and she didn't even know our names," she says. "There were 10 interns and just three staff and we had to work from 9.30am until up to 10pm in a freezing cold building. The designer didn't care if we were looked after or not because there were lots of young people willing to go there."
While some fashion interns find themselves under intense pressure, others report being required to carry out mundane tasks for weeks on end, giving them little experience of value.
"I was left alone all day in a small fashion cupboard with no windows and no chair, and the only thing I had to do was send samples back to PRs and tidy up the cupboard," says a former intern with a leading women's fashion magazine. "There was nothing creative on offer at all."

Not all interns have a negative experience, however. "I did some really exciting things like go on a cover shoot and work with well-known models," says a former intern at the London office of an international fashion magazine. "It was really friendly and I enjoyed myself."
Another former fashion student, who spent three months working unpaid as a marketing assistant with a well-known UK fashion house, says the internship was organised around her needs, not the other way round.
"I saw all sides of the business," she says, "so I got a real insight into how the industry works, helping me decide what I wanted to do."
Alex Try of Interns Anonymous, an online forum for interns, argues that the increasing popularity of unpaid internships may actually be making it more difficult for new graduates to get employment.
"Posts that were previously offered to new graduates are now being staffed by unpaid interns," he says, "so entry-level jobs are disappearing. Why would a company fork out £15,000 to £20,000 a year for an entry-level fashion designer, when they have an endless supply of people willing to do it for free?"
There have, however, been successful challenges to employers who take advantage of interns. Work reader Michelle Jackson was paid £1,000 for work she had done during a six-week internship with an advertising agency after her tax office told her she might be entitled to the minimum wage.
"They put me in touch with the National Minimum Wage Helpline who investigated the agency and found they had a history of using unpaid placements as free labour," she says. "They were ordered to pay me for the work I'd done as well as any other students they had employed and not paid."
Last November, an employment tribunal ordered London Dream Motion Pictures to make backdated minimum wage payments to Nicola Vetta, an art department assistant who had been taken on by the company on an expenses-only basis.
Martin Spence, assistant general secretary of Bectu, the union that supported Vetta's case, was optimistic that the ruling would set a precedent. "We hope this judgment will draw a line in the sand and we will see more employers complying with the law," he said.
Others, however, think a more fundamental change is needed, such as setting a limit on how long someone is allowed to work unpaid.
"Three months would be an appropriate limit for the length of internships, because an organisation should know by then whether they want to give someone a job or not," says Stephen Overell, associate director of The Work Foundation. "Internships should be about giving people an insight into the sector they are interested in working in, but they should not flip over into working for free."

[softgrey]

if the fashion industry had to actually follow any of the employment laws and statutes...
everyone would go bankrupt in a matter of months...

the entire industry is one giant mess...
a company that cannot afford to pay staff should not be in business...
it WOULD NOT be in business if they weren't completely abusing people...

but people keep doing it...
and the more people are willing to work for free...
the worse it is for every single person in the industry...
because for every person working for 'experience'..
there is a qualified professional who is unemployed...
young people are naive enough to believe that the hard work will someday pay off...
but the unfortunate truth is that it rarely does...

it's a disaster really...
...

good article..
thanks for posting and bringing in the topic!...

[shockalika]

Nearly three weeks ago I started an internship at Vogue Russia - a big big big happiness for me as I aim to pursue a fashion journalism career in the future. My dad, as an entrepreneur was disappointed at the fact that I got no contract or document whatsoever. I do realize that this may not be exactly right, but maybe this is how internships in Russia work... I asked the editor who hired me for a recommendation letter when my internships end, and she said that she will have to look at the work that I did. I find her unreliable and wish I had another "headmaster'. Unfortunately the editor who co-ordinates me may not have the power to give me such a letter. Conclusion: fashion internships always carry some sort of risk.

[MulletProof]

Interesting article, Virlly. I did an internship last year and I was surprised that I was hired and even offered another placement at a magazine just as long as we agreed there was no payment involved and continued to dedicate the same hours to it. It wasn't anywhere near as bad as the McQueen stories sound but I do remember thinking exactly on what softgrey says, that maybe someone that really wants it, is qualified for it and consequently should be paid for it is the person that should ideally be getting the job instead, not the first person that's willing to do it for free. In some way it's not very different than what's happening in the modeling industry.. if you want to complain about the ridiculous requirements, there's always preference for someone who's willing to overlook them and even take more crap just to get the job. It really is a disastrous situation.. they've been keeping third-world labor standards for too long and seem to keep pushing it even lower these days.. I hope it all ends well cause the path the fashion industry is heading right now will not just generate more pressure and criticism from outsiders but also serious consequences, I think..

[Spike413]

Interesting article. I have to say that even though I have some sympathy for these students and aspiring designers I have to question why on earth they would still be working for a company, regardless of how prestigious it is, after 8 months of working for free and with no guarantee of employment at some point. That just seems incredibly foolish to me.

I interned while I was in school, but the length of time was pre-set (unless I wanted to continue there by choice) and I was given school credit and a stipend. That's not the norm though, and essentially fashion internships are free labor. On the one hand the experience of working is invaluable, and I think most design schools/programs require an internship at some point as part of the curriculum. But only a fool would stick around longer than a few months slaving away as hard as a paid employee and expecting that they'll be offered a position. From what I've heard a general rule is that the higher-end the company is, the less likely it is that they're looking to hire their interns. The article doesn't seem to prove that theory wrong.

[sublibrarian]

I have always felt that way about internships, in all areas. It is a faulty system and it doesn't work the way it should work, but at the same time its very difficult to think of better solutions.

Universities, of course, don't want to spend money building incredibly expensive workshops for students to learn the ins and outs of the professional world, so they relegate this job to companies. In most schools internships are a requirement, so if you can't find a company that will accept you, you can't graduate. But, surely, no company wants to spend their time and money training people that are more likely to **** up than to get the job done. So few of them take interns, and when they do it is seen as a huge favor, so the second they say yes, they basically own you. This of course, translates into a very sick relationship where the company thinks that since they are putting up with this trainee, he might as well make himself useful. So they overwork the intern, and the intern is too busy fawning over the promise of a future position in order to even complain. And this goes on and on.


Phase two of this deal comes right after graduation. Student A completed his internship, got his diploma, and heads out into the real world. Only to find out that nobody wants to hire graduates in entry levels because the job they would do is perfectly covered by students younger than him that work for free. So then they get organized and complain. The government gets involved, they all want a fraction of the younger slice of the demographic in the next election afterall, so they pass a bill to make all internships paid internships and penalize companies that dont comply. So now the few companies that actually welcomed interns decide to shut down internship programs, because if in addition to fostering someones education, they have to give them a paycheck, well, to put it simply, they are not charity organizations. So now, fewer and fewer students get internships, so nobody can finish their credits, universities keep milking them with monthly tuition fees while they find a sponsor.


Solutions to this problem? none in sight. Maybe eliminating the whole concept of internships is one? I am not sure.