#payinterns

ACE warns that relying too heavily on an unpaid workforce could jeopardise the chances of organisations achieving NPO status. 

Direct action at the Barbican Centre yesterday night.

London Symphony Orchestra, your policies are out of tune.

In December we visited the Serpentine to protest their use of unpaid interns, with a follow up visit in January. Two months later they have confirmed that they are introducing paid internships in accordance with Arts Council guidelines (and National Minimum Wage Legislation). This is excellent news, and we are also pleased that the gallery are looking into ensuring that staff are paid London Living Wage too. We'll continue to put the spotlight on those who choose to exploit young people through unpaid labour - join us!

https://www.facebook.com/futureinterns

ITEM #11

Ragpicker’s name: Anonymous

Title: With love from Jay

Year: 2013

Employer: White Cube

Medium: paper

Size: A4

Description:

A day of awareness and activism around internships and precarious work. Followed by an evening of Latin Music hosted by 3 cosas living wage campaign. The Future Interns 2013 event will be an opportunity to hear about the amazing work going on to fight back against the culture of unpaid work. As well as bringing together speakers it will be an opportunity to meet other interns and take part in workshops. Ultimately it will be a platform for interns to shape their future working conditions. We will have workshops from Precarious Workers Brigade and Ragpickers. Speakers will include Dr Sophie Hope and Charlotte Gerada, Mark Fisher and Federico Campagna.

Today The Devil pays Nada delivered a workshop as part of ArtSmart 2013 on unpaid internships and unfair practice in the arts. It was great to talk to students once again about the topic and cover important information about working rights!

Over the year we've made some great progress on the issue, getting support from influential people within the university, including Heads of Colleges who are prominent figures within the industry, as well as committment from SEE to ban the advertisement of unpaid internships and unfair work opportunities. It's great the the university is taking steps to recognise their role in influencing the industry and backing students.

We had over 2000 of you sign up to the campaign, telling us that this is a key problem for you as a UAL student, which led us to prioritise this as a key area for the SU to work on.

Unpaid internships are unfair and exploitative and here are some key things to remember about them:

 - The law states that interns in the UK are, in most cases, entitled to the National Minimum Wage and fall under the category of a 'worker'

- If you are contributing set tasks to a company which they benefit from in any way, or are given set hours to work in, you are essentially a 'worker' and entitled to a wage!

- Calling an opportunity 'volunteering' etc does not overrule the above, you would still be classed as a worker in the eyes of the law!

- Interns have been claiming back wages that they are owed even after completing an internship, where the employer has been fined by HMRC after being found to have breached Minimum Wage laws.

- Check out Carrot Workers, InternAware and the SUARTS campaign page for more info about the issue and get in touch with us about any questions!

We hope to lead more talks about the issue for UAL students over the coming year, so look out for the campaign. It's been an exciting year and hopefully we will see more fair opportunities for students in the near future!

Fairooz