#insternships

Every Battle of Ideas debate I attended this year made me think. Only one made me want to get off my arse and actually do something. It was the one about the rights and wrongs of unpaid internships.

It's hard to see that many rights.

There are excellent arguments for volunteering for non-profits and for doing work experience as part of an academic, technical or business training programme.

There are excellent arguments for taking up low-paid, post-education training placements within businesses, provided they offer proper, worthwhile training, with – at minimum – a 50% chance of properly-paid work at the end of it.

There are no arguments for allowing profitable businesses to benefit from people's labour without remunerating them for it, unless they are providing a significant and tangible alternative to cash. One that is of substantial value to the people from whose labour the business is benefiting.

A couple of lines on a CV don't count as a significant and tangible alternative.

Unpaid internships are merely a symptom of a much broader and insidious trend in our society whereby people who have lots are gifted more, while the people who have little or nothing have it taken from them.

But this doesn't mean that trying to do something about them is a distraction from working on the bigger issues.