Fortune: Unpaid jobs: The new normal? (you should read the comments, too)

http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2011/03/25/unpaid-jobs-the-new-normal/




I know that's already pretty unbelievable, as well as disgusting, but it gets worse. The CEO of Remote Stylist not only makes unpaid workers sign a four-month contract but insists they commit to work 30 hours a week, since she's been "burned" by people trying to work a job that pays them at the same time they're working for her for free.

You should see the comments on the article.

Where were you? ;)

Our Corporate Overlords have come a long way and rather than seeing it as falling, you might want to embrace the new reality they created. Next election, it looks like America Incorporated will be a subsidy of Koch Industries, doncha' know.

Pssst: If you don't welcome them fondly they will crush you with their almighty financial power and you will UN-EXIST. See: Orwell and the Patriotic Serfdom Act. Otherwise, things could get messy and no more of those cool things like food, iPads, electricity, and all the other things they own and provide to us docile Serfs. We can't do anything but sooth their fevered brows and let them know how much we are their property now. That's the safe way to go and they may find it in their dark, black hearts to let you watch TV and work for them free, if you are careful and good, that is.

The game is almost over, folks.

n/t

Complete eradication of the middle class. Complete reliance on corporate "charity".

It will, finally, be up to us, in the streets, to say "no."

It will be "interesting" when that moment at last comes.

Even more damning, I suppose...

They occupy places in the Democratic Party that ensure TPTB's agenda is not derailed, and they are compensated very, very well for doing so.

Others are easily corruptible by the system we have in place currently.

There's always a reason that the Democrats can't advocate effectively for the working and middle classes (much less the poor).

I strongly feel we're going to have to change the system before we start to see things begin to work in our direction for the betterment of most Americans, and I hope others begin coming to this conclusion soon.

nt

She actually SAID that?

... that it's NOT a metaphor.

Didn't we fight a war over unpaid labor?

!

Federal wage and hour rules are not optional.

Moreover, Obama's Department of Labor is cracking down on this shit nationwide.

See my post #74

from the history books apparently.

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technology that we have bought and paid for that they now own and control? The power and production that was gained on our backs, via our blood, sweat and tears, has purchased a rather intimidating slew of tools to use against us, (we are the enemy we were letting them prepare for).

A guillotine is a speck of dust compared to the trillions of dollars worth of hi-tech seeking and killing devices we have financed. Not to mention the weapons that we don't even know about, yet.

The only thing that is going to prove to be a counter-point to what we have given them from our own pockets to create for their created enemies and then, turn upon us, is for all of us to rise up in our vast numbers. That will be very messy and risky, to say the least. Yet, extrapolate the outcome for yourself and your children and so on, and compare the results. Serfdom is not what we are or want, and so, we are at a pivotal point where each of us must weigh-out the cost of one way or the other. There seems to no longer be any reasonable in-between that I can see.

So, if her slaves employees don't show up for their mandatory 30 hours, what's she going to do, have them thrown in jail?

The regard business has for labor has become obsene.

2 cents per hour when you can get someone in your own country to do the same work for free?

Pretty soon, we won't be competing with the Chinese for cheap labor. They'll be competing with us for ree labor.

What a fucked-up country.

Line for the guillotine forms HERE.

"One editor and two cameramen ended up quitting before the end of the trek due to rough conditions and 16-hour workdays. In retrospect, Lovejoy says, "I would screen a little bit better and make sure they understood that this wasn't a vacation."

Crystal Green, owner of Tallahassee-based event planning firm Your Social Butterfly, has had mixed results with unpaid staffers who didn't take their responsibilities seriously. She's even had to retrace the missteps of unpaid staffers and apologize to alienated business partners."

Straight from the article:

"Unfortunately for many employers hoping to use unpaid labor to advance their business goals, there are strict federal and state rules that workers must be paid the minimum wage and paid for overtime, and must abide by other provisions in the Fair Labor Standards Act"

Boo-fucking-hoo. Cry me a damned river. Unfortunately, slave labor is illegal? What the FUCK.

on job hopping. Gosh, I can't imagine why employers might be having problems with retention, can you? :sarcasm:

:puke:

It's no secret that rethugs absolutely hate minimum wage laws. They fight against them tooth and nail every time they come up. I wouldn't be surprised in the least if they started trying to repeal minimum wage laws, especially if someone like Bachmann were to manage to get elected.

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I left her one last night that could be construed as, shall we say, less than supportive and a little bit rude

:)

Usually with these types of articles, you see a slew of teabagger responses. Not so much this time. Here's a sampling:

you call this LIVING?! and we as Americans are supposed to be OK with this?!! i'm ready for the next revolution.
....

Tell me again why unions are "outdated" and "unnecessary"?
....

If people work for free, how do they survive? Even Henry Ford realized that if he didn't pay a living wage people won't be able to buy his cars. We live in a sick world today
....

As a card carrying member of the Unpaid Workers Union, I must say, paid workers really tick me off. However, slaves should not have the right to roam around and work for just anyone; they need to be branded with a hot iron just in case they get any of those old fashioned ideas about working for a wage. (kudos for the sarcasm)
....

Aw, da poor widdle slave masters complaining about the lazy freeloaders . . . oh, wait. The EMPLOYER is the lazy freeloader.
....

Even slaves got food & shelter.

Jesus Christ, I knew this was coming, but to see it materialize in real time...

Working for free, and still having to pay for your own rent/mortgage, food, clothing, transportation, etc?

Sounds WORSE than slavery. Only difference is that presumably there's no physical abuse going on.

They didn't tell her it was unpaid until toward the end of the conversation/negations. The guy really wanted to get her. She came with excellent recs and from a top notch school. She said she knew it was an internship, but she needed gas money get there at the very least. When he couldn't even offer that, she turned them down. Her take....why would they let someone they wouldn't pay work on multimillion dollar equipment and what does that say about how they respect your skill.

paid them while they learned the job, and then gave them pay raises as their worth to the company increased..:(

Why pay people when you can get their work for free, and then manufacture a reason why you cannot "afford" to hire them when the "internship" ends?

disgusting:puke:

They are counting on a new breed not knowing and the rest of us forgetting.

No new comments have appeared there since before I posted this thread. It looks as though they allowed the clueless CEO of Remote Stylist to have the last word, or next-to-last word, dismissing all the criticism and defending herself:

The point that's grossly missed in these comments is it's not about the money...it's about the learning experience....

But since she said this in the first quoted comment in the article

From a cost savings perspective, to get something off the ground, it's huge. Especially if you're a small business.

it's clearly about the money for her. Keeping the money for herself, and taking advantage of people's desperation to get them to work for her for free.

I wish we could see all the comments that were posted that haven't been released.

which I'd love to see.

n/t

but my perspective is, if you can't afford to pay your labor you can't afford to be in business.

The thing I'm wondering is, if anyone knows any of those Anonymous guys, could they possibly be convinced to patch Remote Stylist's website to use job titles from antebellum plantations like "overseer" and "slavedriver"?

Seriously, though, the government needs to close this business and charge the CEO with slavery.

I guess Lincoln would be called anti-competitive nowadays.

Criminal.

"Hungrier", eh? No surprise, there.

No jobs available? Just work for free!

That may be OK for someone with savings thsy can live off. To someone like me, working paycheck to paycheck, it sounds a lot like "Let them eat cake".

divinely chosen leaders. They will receive further rewards in the afterlife as long as they do as they're told in this world.

but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness. So I got that goin' for me.

Unfortunately for many employers hoping to use unpaid labor to advance their business goals, there are strict federal and state rules that workers must be paid the minimum wage and paid for overtime, and must abide by other provisions in the Fair Labor Standards Act, which applies to about 135 million people working for 7.3 million employers. :cry: :cry: :cry: it's all the fault of those evil unions :cry: :cry: :cry:

We need to level the playing field and change the laws so that *every* company has the opportunity to "hire" free labor. Nobody has a right to earn a wage for their work. NOBODY!!!!!! Money in exchange for labor is a *privilege* that can only be extended to the best and brightest, as determined by their last names. :sarcasm: for the seriously challenged

We need to give them MORE and MORE money, so that maybe they'll create all these well-paying jobs for the new century!

Bet their employee cafeteria has "gruel" on the menu, too...

John Lovejoy, managing director of multimedia fundraising company Nomadic Nation, received 300 responses for an editor position and 700 cameraman applications after only one week of advertising a project to drive from Germany to Cambodia in plastic cars. Not only were the positions unpaid, but successful candidates had to pay their own expenses.

One editor and two cameramen ended up quitting before the end of the trek due to rough conditions and 16-hour workdays. In retrospect, Lovejoy says, "I would screen a little bit better and make sure they understood that this wasn't a vacation."

This is what GHW Bush was aiming for with his "Thousand Points of Light" BS. Remember that? He wanted everyone to go out and volunteer! It sounded so wonderful and noble on the surface, but it was really just cover so they could say, "Look! People are doing that voluntarily. They're willing to do the job out of the goodness of their hearts. We don't need to pay someone to do it." Who needs more cops on the beat protecting the the neighborhood, when we have all these wonderful citizens watches?

It looks like something similar is happening in the UK, Prime Minister Cameron's Big Society. He wants to farm out social services and libraries to volunteers.

"you call this LIVING?! and we as Americans are supposed to be OK with this?!! i'm ready for the next revolution."

One of my main rules in life.

would deliberately fuck up so badly that they cost the company millions of dollars. Send around an email photo of your penis or boobs to the biggest clients, close down accounts by "accident", that sort of general havoc. This new mass slavery movement would end pretty quickly.

I wonder if GE or BP needs any "unpaid workers". Give a few hundred of us "unpaid worker" status, I'm sure we could do quite a bit of damage.

The greatest revenge is if some file a suit for back pay. Just defending a lawsuit will probably bankrupt this POS company.

money. My only question is, what took them so long? God Bless America! :woohoo: :patriot:

The only way my self-esteem could be low enough for that to work would require me to be dead.:rofl:

of being beaten down over and over.

Huh. I wonder why?
:silly:

"her last year of high school at Neuchatel Junior College in the swiss alps"

Neuchâtel Junior College (or NJC) is a private Canadian international school located in the French-speaking town of Neuchâtel, Switzerland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuch%C3%A2tel_Junior_College


katherine reynolds lewis appears to have the same class background & financial industry connections:

Katherine Reynolds Lewis is a Harvard-educated journalist with 15 years' experience writing for magazines, newspapers and online, in addition to radio and television appearances. Her expertise is finance, work and family. Her articles have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Fiscal Times, Newark Star-Ledger, MSN Money, Parade, Slate and Washington Post Magazine, among others.

She worked as a national correspondent covering money and work for Newhouse News Service from 2003 to 2008. Previously, she reported for Bloomberg News in Washington on everything from agriculture, financial markets, media and technology policy to Congress and the White House. She began her career in New York with the Bond Buyer, a municipal bond industry publication. Active in the Asian American Journalists Association, she serves as founding co-chair of the AAJA Digital Group.

Katherine created and runs CurrentMom.com, an incubator and group blog for entrepreneurial moms. She also created and writes the working moms site for About.com.

http://katherinerlewis.blogspot.com/2010/04/sue-debt-collector.html.

She's probably using *free labor* that the Canadian Government is paying for.

I complained to them 10 years ago when I was working for a tech company who set arbitrary deadlines then expected us to work as many hours as the project took to get it finished on time. Sometimes 60 hrs or more a week, without overtime or time off in lieu, just the regular check. I read the labour code first and that was not what was intended. But the labour board still chose to interpret it in favour of the employer and let it go.

But on the other hand, I remember a few years back, a small company doing exactly what this one is doing, using volunteers as unpaid labour with the benefit to them of learning a new skill and they put a stop to it. And on another hand... businesses have gotten away with unpaid practicums for years. Its all how they work it I guess but just never in favour of the employee.

Interns aren't supposed to do the work of paid employees. Why haven't any of the interns filed a complaint with the labor boards?

Another sad part is that laws are only as important as the people willing to enforce them. And with the tea party revolution of 2010, and possibly 2012, it doesn't even matter if unpaid internships are illegal. No tea party appointed labor board is going to prosecute these abuses.

I'm not surprised by this behavior. I don't konw what to say though because I am surprised that they are so blatant and open about demanding such high standards from unpaid, illegal labor. They realize nobody will report them, and even if they do who will prosecute? Crime is scary, but when the criminals become so blatant that they don't even feel the need to hide it anymore then you really, really have to worry.

Also, like someone said earlier, the author who is hiring these unpaid laborers seems to be a trust fund kid.

Because that's clearly what they do: hoard money. They don't spend it, they don't invest it, they just take and take and take - whether it's from us, from the taxpayers (fuck you GE), or what have you. Then they go and spend it on our worthless media who keeps telling people that this kind of behavior is OK. It's fucking sickening is what it is.

Doesn't there have to be an exchange in order for the contract to be legal?

The only people who can Work for FREE are people with some outside resources, like a rich mummie & daddie.
You know,.... the RIGHT kind of people.

Anyone who has "hired" an intern at below minimum wage to conduct business that has benefited the company directly in an economic way is in direct violation of federal law. That is a fact. Any college or university that has given students credit for internships that don't pass the 6 factor test is also in violation of federal law.

Needless to say, these laws were not followed during the Bush administration, but they are quite real. You can't have an intern doing the work of a regular employee. It's simply illegal. We've drifted so far from the basic understanding of minimum wage laws that students I deny internships to can't understand how you can even have an internship that doesn't directly benefit the provider site. Internships, I explain, are actually supposed to be economic LOSSES for provider sites. They gape at me. Yes, dear. Running an internship program is actually supposed to COST a company money, not make them money. How can that be, they ask. Oh, it be. They are providing internships as a SERVICE, not using them in place of paid labor. But...but...

I've even directly upbraided various company reps who've questioned me on this. They are trying to get free labor, and I, for one, won't fucking have it. I say this as the department internship director in a nationally-known university.

@kellyfallis
http://twitter.com/kellyfallis

About 70 new comments, overwhelmingly critical. As they should be:

http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2011/03/25/unpaid-jobs-the-new-normal/

Fucking vultures.

And the rich get richer...

it was stuff like being part of a landscaping crew during the summer. This job was as an assistant at a nonprofit organization, which I got by volunteering and working hard in their membership office while I continued to look for work. When a job opened up after about 2 months there, they offered it to me. I was 20 with a HS education and had zilch to offer anyone except my brains and willingness to work hard. Hell, I couldn't even type (pre-computer days) -- my boss had confidence I'd learn. She showed me the fingering and that was it. I did learn quite quickly and happily worked for her for a couple of years until I went to college.

How sad that this is now being sold as a new normal and for what gains for the "volunteers" -- a self-confidence boost? Fuck that. I'm sure I wasn't alone in the past finding it was a creative way to get hired. Now it sounds like just more slave labor and exploitation.

for free for companies profiting from your labor.

I've seen tool-run businesses like this - usually small marketing or other organizationally structured "consulting" businesses. They get a big name or a well-connected Ivy-Leaguer in the front office to solicit projects from other snobs and the easily impressed, then hire a bunch of interns to actually work the project. Poor schmoes that sign on to work as an intern on a high-visibility, expensive project that they can put on their resume are actually being used to be development leads or production managers, so that this "small business" can build their portfolio up and get more clients.
Of course, once the job is done, the interns are let go - their worth was only that they were a tool to get to the customer's bank account. And when or if the small business gets off the ground and needs a regular workforce, they don't look back at their interns unless that intern has the right connections by birth or by a subsequent actual job to play in that company's sandbox.

This has been going on for decades. Back in the day when the Labor Department was less "business-friendly" (i.e. - the nineties), a lot of small tech and marketing consulting businesses got in trouble playing these sorts of games, but there's been enough of a blind eye turned towards these sorts of shenanigans that it now seems to be business as usual. The only times I've seen a business get audited for the way they treat their interns is if they have a government contract.

Haele

If we could just get rid of all the red-tape regulation, and make it easier for large corporations to put more people to work this way.. the only problem is it's difficult to collect taxes from people who are working for free... so there wo...uld have to be some sort of additional work, for the city government, for example. The people who are working (as interns) for the corporations, could say, sweep and mop the City Hall and Government buildings on weekends, as a way to make up for the lack of tax-revenue. That would also eliminate the need for janitorial staff and unions.

"People who work for free are far hungrier than anybody who has a salary"

"If we could just get rid of all the red-tape regulation, and make it easier for large corporations to put more people to work this way.. the only problem is it's difficult to collect taxes from people who are working for free... so there wo...uld have to be some sort of additional work, for the city government, for example. The people who are working (as interns) for the corporations, could say, sweep and mop the City Hall and Government buildings on weekends, as a way to make up for the lack of tax-revenue. That would also eliminate the need for janitorial staff and unions."


People who say,write and believe this fucking bullshit are nothing more than a total waste of Oxygen.

I have been a Pacifist all my adult life...but its this kind of thinking makes me wanna go Ninja on some Wall St. CEO's Ass!

That was in the COMMENTS section, as I stated. And I'm guessing he needed a sarcasm tag.

Owners value you by the number they have to pay for you. Witness all of the defense of high executive salaries in this country to attract "the talented". When you work for free, you are telling your employer that you have no value. Don't do this.

I thought temp agency owners were the lowest forms of life in existence. I was wrong.

it's going to be the norm?? wait a minute....if you're not paid, no SS is deducted = no SS. the sharks are trolling the water :(