In the past week, almost everyone I know (slight exaggeration) have sent me an article from the NYT titled, The Unpaid Intern, Legal or Not. It certainly was an interesting read focusing on the legality of for-profit entities “hiring” people to work for free. This issue is certainly relevant to the areas of sustainability, renewable energy and clean tech (aka “green jobs”) since so many people lacking the background to easily transition into these fields, have relied on the opportunitty to work unpaid, in order to gain some level of credibility.
Thus, I was not surprised when one example focused on Oregon’s labor department citing that it had, “…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.”
WILL THIS CHANGE?
Offering free or “pro bono” work has definitley been one way that people have gotten into highly sought after positions/organizations. And when the economy was at its worst, this often felt like the path with the highest probability of success. Not to mention if unemployed, most highly-motivated individuals would rather do something productive with that time than troll the internet all day looking for jobs.
So what does this article mean? Will there be any decrease in amount of pro bono work being offered and/or accepted? Probably not. The good news is that pro bono work is decreasing because companies are increasingly in less precarious financial situations and are needing to hire (strategically!) The less good news is that this is still considered a reasonable way to aquire the experience that might be needed to make certain career transitions.
LESSONS
The lessons here are twofold…
1) Be aware of these laws (and the specific criteria involved) so that you can hopefully avoid these issues even coming up.
2) If you are actually offering to do a specific project for a company that is leveraging the experince that you do have (which I reccomend) as opposed to just “offering your time,” consider offering it at a deeply discounted rate rather than for free. Human nature dictates that everyone will take the engagment more seriously which in turn, benefit all parties involved…
And of course, let’s hope that in the coming months this will all become less of an issue as demand for employees grows and smart, motivated and innovative people can make the career transitions they so desperately want…fingers crossed!!