policy & reform
campusreview.com.au
Gigging around
Gig-style internships are on the
rise. Should we be concerned?
By Loren Smith
N
ational newspaper The Australian
does not have an internship
program. Nonetheless, a few
years ago, a young woman interned
there, by virtue of the fact that she was a
company bigwig’s daughter. This woman
is now a prominent journalist at a different
publication. This highlights just one pitfall
of internships – unequal access. Other,
potentially more serious barriers include
people’s inability to work for free, and
exploitation while on the (unpaid) job.
Yet, far from being regulated and
curtailed, in many industries unpaid
internships have become the norm.
Australia’s only national study of internships,
released in 2016, found that 58 per cent
of Australians aged 18–29 had undertaken
12
“at least one episode of UWE [unpaid work
experience] in the last five years”. Twenty
per cent had participated in at least five.
According to Fair Work guidelines, an
intern should be paid depending on the
length of the internship, and whether they
are performing work that an employee
would otherwise do. By this logic, I have
done a number of internships that should
have been paid – unsurprising, considering
the advertising, media and public relations
industries advertise the most internships.
One solution to this problem has been
proffered by the likes of the University of
Sydney, which invites employers on campus
to offer students limited, useful work
experience. Another, US-based one takes
this concept a step further. Parker Dewey,
taking inspiration from the gig economy,
has applied this methodology to internships.
Using Parker Dewey as the intermediary,
companies offer paid tasks specifically
to interns, who apply and, if successful,
execute them. For example, a company
can offer ‘data cleanup’, which requires
the intern to “review, update and correct
database records”. In return, the company
must pay the intern $200. Parker Dewey
takes a 10 per cent commission from such
transactions – from the intern’s pay.
Campus Review reached out to some of
the companies that offer work experience
at USYD to gather their thoughts on Parker
Dewey’s proposition, which is currently
only available in the US. PwC, the only one
that responded, said engaging a firm like it
wouldn’t be out of the question.
Parker Dewey uses the term ‘career
launcher’ instead of ‘intern’, underscoring
the supposed utility of its platform for
interns. A testimonial by Microsoft on the
Parker Dewey website notes that Microsoft
staffers were so impressed with the career
launcher they used that they offered
her a summer internship and ultimately
hired her. This situation, however, is more