Should Social Enterprise take on unpaid interns?

This is a relatively short post, but its something that caught my eye and I feel that its quite interesting. This article mainly talks about the different angles into looking at this topic. One of them is that through this, job seekers could be able to get a job offer from the company after they have proved their worth during their internship. On the other hand, the article takes it into account of young job seekers who cannot afford to work for free, and in that case, is this a form of discrimination?

It then ends it by asking the public whether is it ethical for Social Enterprises to offer unpaid internships. To my surprise, even though its not half yet, but 37.6% of the respondents feels that its not unethical, and that they should continue offering unpaid internships. Whereas the rest of the 62.4% believes that it is unethical.

The arguments that people are raising up are that since interns get the valuable experience through the internship, it should have been more than enough. Another argument is that people feel that if both parties reach a mutually beneficial agreement with full disclosure on both sides of the equation, they do not see how is that unethical. On the other hand, some respondents feel that it creates a negative social impact itself.

Personally, I am not in favor of Social Enterprises offering unpaid internship base on these few points. Firstly, since Social Enterprise is a business by itself, its not a NPO or charity that relies on donations to survive and that they have their own revenue, on what grounds are they to say that they need not pay for the interns' work? To put it bluntly, are they not asking for free labour? Secondly, if the argument is that interns should get valuable experience working in the society, they should get the entire package, which includes from stretching their capabilities, to getting paid. When I say about being paid, obviously I am talking about marketable prices for the interns. For some, it might be only deemed to be as an allowance, more than a salary. Lastly, have Social Enterprises not learnt about extrinsic motivations? Salaries are definitely one part of the key factors that leads to better performance, as it drives the interns to work hard to get their goal. Interns may lose their interests and feel demoralized seeing colleagues receiving rewards for their hard work, but not having anything for themselves.

Definitely, there could be some exemptions. For example if interns really want to get into this Social Enterprise as it is the only one that is able to give interns this set of skills no other Social Enterprises are able to give, trading their salaries for the experience could be well worth it.

Above are just my two cents worth. What about you readers looking at these post? Do you all believe that Social Enterprises should be able to take on unpaid interns? Give me your comments!

Read the full article here : http://www.guardian.co.uk/social-enterprise-network/poll/2011/nov/02/social-enterprise-blog?newsfeed=true

Reference :

Mills, D. (2011, November 2). Should Social Enterprise take on unpaid interns? Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/social-enterprise-network/poll/2011/nov/02/social-enterprise-blog?newsfeed=true