We've been biding our time since the announcement last week that the NUJ had won its first victory in its 'Cashback for Interns' campaign because we suspected there might be more to the story. Turns out we were right. Briefly, the story is this: Keri Hudson, an Interactive Media Production student at Bournemouth University, worked as an unpaid intern at the My Village website earlier this year. With the NUJ's support, she went to an employment tribunal after leaving the company to claim back pay, arguing that she deserved to have been paid for the role that she performed, which she claimed included line-managing a team of writers.
The appeal to the tribunal was successful, and - to general acclaim from across the journalism world - she was awarded £1,024.98 last week.
Regular readers, of course, will know that FleetStreetBlues has never been a fan of the campaign. Back in February we stirred up a bit of a row by pointing out that the campaign would actually result in an end to all unpaid casual work experience placements. (The NUJ's Work Experience Guidelines explicitly state that the only people who don't have to be paid the minimum wage are those who are at school, or who are paying to be study journalism as part of a recognised college course.)
So it will comes as no surprise that we were rather underwhelmed by the court ruling - but that was all the more true when the Press Gazette finally managed to get hold of the other side of the story from the publishers of the My Village website, TPG Web Publishing, earlier today.
The company claims that it was completely unaware that the employment tribunal was even taking place on the day in question, was unable to attend to defend itself and is now considering whether to appeal. Here's what they said:
Interns are not used by all companies as cheap labour, as reports suggest. Internships are set up to give graduates work experience, allow them to try their hands at a specific career and basically improve their employability – particularly valuable in these difficult times for those looking for jobs.
A lot of time and resource goes into training unqualified and inexperienced interns to prepare them for working life and this is done at company expense. In the case of My Village, interns not only benefited from getting their work published and attributed to them but they were often treated to free lunches and event tickets from the venues they reviewed. Some interns from MyVillage.com have been offered full time work because of the experience gained. The most recent case being that of one intern who joined leading mortgage industry magazine Mortgage Introducer as a full-time reporter.
However if publishers are to be punished for helping inexperienced volunteers gain work experience, these opportunities will become few and far between. The outcome will be more graduates in the unemployment line with no experience to their name. What chance will they have?It's a valid argument - and while it's impossible to know for certain the ins and outs of the NUJ case, it does seem as though victory has been declared a little prematurely. A quick spot of Googling reveals a massive gap between what Keri saw as her role at the company and their perception of her as 'unqualified and inexperienced'.
On her LinkedIn profile, Keri describes her position at the company as a 'senior editor', and writes:
I manage the team of writers at MyVillage, delegating tasks and training new members of the team. I also run the different editorial on the site, producing various titles which the team then research and write. Liasing with at the various film/entertainment/food & drink/music PR agencies that send us content is also part of my daily tasks, along with the development of MyVillage's social media marketing strategy and maintenance. Aside from this, I write various reviews and articles for the site, specialising in arthouse film, fashion and live music.But a quick look at her Twitter feed around that time paints a rather different picture, as she praises her 'amazing internship' for allowing her to review a cocktail bar, reveals how her 'heart was practically beating out of her chest' after her first-ever interview with a band and then tackles her first-ever restaurant review. All fantastic experience for an unpaid intern making her way in the journalism world - but hard to reconcile with someone performing a 'senior editor' role.
(Keri has since been in touch and points out that these tweets date from the part of the internship that she hasn't claimed back pay for).
Ultimately it's hard to begrudge Keri her pay award, regardless of her true level of experience - she clearly worked hard, and no one should have to work for free for up to nine weeks just so they can build a career in the industry they love.
But it is increasingly hard to see what the NUJ hopes to achieve with this wrong-headed campaign.
This kind of tribunal ruling isn't going to suddenly force employers to see the light and start paying lots of casual interns - they'll simply stop taking them on.
It isn't going to open up journalism to people from all backgrounds - it's going to further limit access to those who can afford costly journalism courses.
And it isn't going to help the careers of the supposed beneficiaries in the long-term - minimum wage back pay is poor compensation for permanently blotting your copybook with any future employers by publicly demanding money for a job you agreed at the time not to be paid for.
17 comments:
The NUJ campaign may not result only in the withdrawal of work experience. There is always the possibility that publishers may decide to use these valuable opportunites as a revenue stream and start charging for 'practical work experience and training' that way they can be assured a contract is in place and the student hack is left with no avenue to seek recompense later.
The earth is flat. The earth is flat. The earth is flat.
You can keep on "pointing out" these opinions as if they are facts but they remain untrue.
The NUJ guidelines explain the law. It is the law that does not allow companies not to pay for work done except in specific circumstances. Specifically it is hte minimum wage legislation. Skillset's work experience guidelines point this out too.
But then facts are not things you deal in, are they?
You "pointed out" that The NUJ's campaign will "result in an end to all unpaid casual work experience placements".
Do you want to admit that that is just a silly statement?
From the NUJ's guidelines:
HM Revenue & Customs insists that all work experience placements are covered by the National Minimum Wage regulations. Only students on work placements of up to one year that are endorsed by their university or college as being beneficial to the coursework, some apprentices, some trainees of government-funded schemes and those of compulsory school age are exempt
from the minimum wage...
...All other work experience placements are covered by the minimum wage – even employers offering unemployed workers work experience to help them improve their CVs must pay the minimum wage for that worker’s age.
Campaigning for that law to be rigorously enforced does seem likely to kill off casual unpaid work experience placements, yes...
Why assume that people who claim their legal entitlement will 'blot their copybooks'? Keri Hudson was offered a paid position the day she resigned from her internship. Her current employers have supported her in her legal case.
The people most likely to believe in vengeful employers are those former interns who have been led, or led themselves, to believe that their exploitation was good and necessary. Perhaps it is hard to live with the knowledge that it was not.
A lot of teenagers come into my newspaper office on work experience because they want to find out if journalism is for them.
Does the NUJ think they should be paid?
Well, you've certainly twisted things here!
You fail to point out that those tweets were from the period before Christmas, when my role did just cover simple duties such as reviewing cocktail bars and interviewing bands. And yes, that was great experience.
The real change came after January 4th - which was the point that my position was transferred from that of a normal intern to Senior Editor (along with a credit on the website - allow me to send you a screenshot!), and I began to undertake the roles listed on my Linkedin. Please note that I only claimed for the period beginning the 4th Janaury, and not for the time before that.
Perhaps if you understood the case more clearly, you would have searched for my tweets past the 4th - things along the lines of
'Most depressing day of the year, sick with flu, and into work I go to train two new starters at a job I don't get paid for. Literally #FML'
and
'Waiting with baited breath to see what my pay offer will be at work tomorrow. Has been told it's 'half way to decent'. Not min wage #intern'
and finally
'@fashionknitsta just fuming beyond words. After managing a team of 6 and running an entire website, my manager has decided I'm worth £0.'
My suggestion would be that you get in contact before posting things that can be so easily underminded.
Some interns are clearly exploited and deserve to be paid. That may well be the case with Ms Hudson.
But the NUJ's campaign (and rigorous enforcement of this law) will mean that work experience and hence jouranlism careers are confined to those who can pay for expensive courses. In a trade / profession that's already skewed towards a privileged demographic this is not a good thing.
"A quick spot of googling reveals..."
I've got a better idea. Why don't you ring up the people involved for their side of the story?
I believe they call it "journalism"
Tom Davies
Don't work for slick-looking but poorly written websites that pretend trainees become senior editors overnight. Dine with cannibals, sooner or later you get eaten.
Regarding Nate's comment above...
Internships and work experience are different. This is about internships. It's important to make the distinction which would surely be based mainly on time "served". I don't know if the law already draws a line. Anyone out there have that crucial information? If not the line needs to be legally drawn -e.g. two weeks = work experience?
Second point re Nate comment: when you say the NUJ rule (based on the law, which is not to be sneezed at, is it?) means that only the "privileged" who can pay for courses would get internships... Well, I wouldn't agree that's a given anyway, but I'd ask you to explain how working long-term (months... two years was the longest I've heard of) with no income whatsoever is feasible let alone attractive to the "underprivileged"?
The convention of working for money developed for a reason: people need to eat.
More widely, money makes the world go round - capitalism wholly depends on paying people for their work so that they can buy stuff. Remember how slavery went out of fashion...
All the best to all
Phil Sutcliffe, London Freelance Branch, NUJ
NUJ work experience best practice guidelines are pretty clear.
What Fleet Street Blues has reproduced above are not actually part of the NUJ guidelines - they are part of an introductory section in the wider NUJ document on Work Experience entitled "what the law says". Does what it says on the tin really.
The atualy NUJ guidelines make it clear (in the first two sentences) that unpaid work placements do happen and should be for a MINIMUM of two weeks to allow for people on them to get a decent level of experience! It also makes clear placements will normally be up to four weeks long.
This is clearly not the NUJ "campaigning for the (minimum wage) law to be rigorously enforced" and trying to close off work experience placements.
The NUJ has never, ever had problems with youngsters from schools and students/graduates trying out for a few weeks to see if the job is for them and that is very clearly not the purpose of the action we have taken in this instance.
The problem comes with employers using the fact that there are a large number of well-trained and clearly talented people trying to get jobs in an increasingly devalued and changing market.
The unscrupulous will dangle a carrot of the possibility of a paid position to many youngsters who are in a position to work for nothing for many months. This is clearly already something that most people from less well-off backgrounds simply can't do.
Some major employers are now even officially advertising jobs where you don't get paid. I don't know if anyone saw the recent advert in the Metro (here's a link to a snap I took of it - you will need to zoom in to read detail http://yfrog.com/z/gze0vmrj )
I don't know how the next logical step because of our "hollow victory" is for employers to start charging people for the privilege of working for them. If that was something they thought they could do, they would be doing it already.
Following that logic through to its conclusion, all working journalists should drop any pay demands we may have and just start working for free on the basis there may be rich people willing to pay money to the employer to come in and do our jobs instead...
If it is something that does start to happen then it's something the union will have to campaign on and fight against as well. Because it's part of the same problem - heading to the point where professional journalism really does become simply a fun hobby for the rich to have a play at, closed off to anyone without a serious financial cushion to live off.
If the NUJ doesn't fight over issues like this to try to at least slow down the foot-to-the-floor drive to devalue and undermine our trade and our work, I'd really like to know who the embittered and ill-informed NUJ-bashers think is going to step in to fight for journalists instead.
Lawrence Shaw, NUJ full-time official
Spot on Tom. There's a distinct lack of journalism in this post. No attempt to contact the NUJ or the people behind the campaign, or Kerri herself. It's sloppy and it's lazy.
I can't help but feel that the NUJ need to make it a lot more clear that they aren't talking about week/fortnight/month-long Work Experience placements. When I did my NCTJ prelims, they wanted at least two weeks work experience, so that sort of thing could be used to hamper would-be journalists.
@Essex Hack. What is not clear? The NUJ's work experience guidelines recommend that work experience placements should be at least two weeks long. We state that unpaid work experience should be for no longer than four weeks.
These are points one and two of the guidelines. The exact wording is:
1. Work placements should be for a minimum of two weeks. In exceptional circumstances, when the student is moving between a number of placements, one week may be sufficient.
2. Unpaid work placements should normally be for no more than four weeks. Paid work placements may be for six weeks, or longer if part of a sandwich course.
FleetstreetBlues is simply telling lies saying anything else. It is FleetstreetBlues causing the confusion by continuing to circulate mnisinformation despite having been told the facts.
The full guidelines are at http://www.nujtraining.org.uk/page.phtml?id=2027&category=advice&finds=0&string=&strand=
All FleetstreetBlues had to do is what any work experience student would have been told to do and that is to call the NUJ and ask to speak to someone. The fact is several of us have offered to speak before and been ignored.
Fleetstreetblues thinks ethics is the county you live in.
@whealie
That's what the NUJ would like, but it's not what they're campaigning for. The whole basis of their current campaign is 'it's the law'. They're not trying to change the law, they want the law AS IT STANDS to be implemented with the full power of the courts.
The law as it stands is in the same document you quote and says:
The Law
HM Customs and Revenue insists that all work experience placements are covered by the minimum wage regulations. Only students on work placements that are endorsed by their university or college as being beneficial to the coursework are exempt from the minimum wage. Such placements may be up to one year. Employers offerings such placements, even for much shorter periods, require a letter from the student’s college confirming that the work placement is of benefit to the student.
All other work experience placement are covered by the minimum wage – even employers offering unemployed workers work experience to help them improve their CVs must pay the minimum wage for that worker’s age.
We're really, geniunely not trying to misrepresent the NUJ's campaign. We understand that they have drawn up some very specific guidelines which are somewhere between current practice and the law as it stands.
But can you understand how in the meantime a campaign for the law as it stands to be implemented by the courts might persuade some HR departments they'd better not break the law as it stands?
Another load of willful union-bashing misrepresentation, even after you are presented with the actual contents of the NUJ Work Experience guidelines by Whealie.
I'd like for you to point to me exactly where it says the NUJ is "campaigning for the law as it stands to be implemented" in some blanket fashion.
You could maybe look at the NUJ page Cashback for Interns. It can be clicked to from our website front page.
There's a quote in there from Jeremy:
"Former interns can claim up to six years after they finished their unpaid stint, through the county courts. The NMW rules do not apply, however, to students on work experience placements. Internships tend to be longer than work experience, with a greater time commitment and deadlines, and involve making a contribution to the work of the organisation."
If you are accusing the NUJ of trying to stop the practice of people working for long periods of time for established employers, with real responsibility and results demanded, for no money whatsoever, then yes we are. "Internships" - something we seem to have only recently imported from America - are masking huge exploitation and should be better regulated and people at least paid something. If that is your charge, then we are guilty.
But you are trying to suggest that the NUJ is trying to put a stop to people gaining work experience. Surely you can clearly see that this is not the case from the facts we have presented on this thread where the union supports work experience placements of up to six weeks, and from the union statements we have provided.
I wonder why you are so keen to present the NUJ as some alien force, making decisions on campaigns that seem fall from the clear blue sky?
Why your site, purporting to want to help youngsters get into the industry, is keen to attack any organisation that tries to help them get paid for their efforts?
The NUJ is democratic, and all members have an equal say in how it is run and who runs it. I happen to know that pretty much every sector of the union is behind this drive to stop people working for nothing alongside paid employees as they can see the dangers it presents to all journalists who want to earn a living.
If you're not behind what the union is doing, then why don't you raise it in your branch and win the argument against pursuing the campaign further?
I suspect it's because you're not a member.
Obviously it's difficult to ascertain this because you hide behind your mask of anonymity, throwing stones of ignorance.
It's interesting that most of the people who try to (often inaccurately) criticise anything unions do are actually not part of them. I often wonder what is really behind lazy attempts like this to try to undermine collectives winning justice.
Again I repeat my point - who else do you think is going to stand up and fight against the drive to turn journalism into a hobby only the rich can afford to take part in?
@fleet street blues Please stop trying to confuse two issues. @Essex Hack asked about work experience while doing NCTJ prelims. This is clearly work experience under the NUJ’s guidelines and the law and is different to an unpaid internship.
The NUJ is NOT going to take anyone to court for offering such work experience placements. We support work experience. We have set out how we think it could be best managed to give the student the most benefit. We will help any of our members asked to run work experience or to mentor or monitor a work experience student and provide feedback.
You are misprepresenting the NUJ’s position because you refuse to distinguish between genuine work experience that is necessary as part of studying to be a journalist and long-term internships where a person works but does not get paid. We are talking about people who are not in full-time education.
If you still do not understand, do what a good journalist would do and phone and ask.
Post a Comment