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A fair day ’ s work
The case for reconsidering unpaid student placements .
Olivia Armitage interviewed by Wade Zaglas
Professional placements are in many , if not most , university courses these days , with the goal being to strengthen students ’ industry knowledge and networks . But what is the price of these placements , particularly when students have to forgo their usual paid work to complete them ? Could another solution be found ?
To discuss this Campus Review spoke to Olivia Armitage , whose petition to end unpaid placements has now garnered nearly 10,000 responses .
Armitage talks about how the idea for the petition was formed , and how her fellow students thought that unpaid placements for up to 500 hours “ were pretty messed up ”.
She added that , for Victorian students in particular , “ to expect us to just give up paid work after we ’ ve spent nearly a year trying to regain it , is absolutely ridiculous ”. Also , not having to worry about unpaid placements would allow students to focus on their studies .
To solve this issue , Armitage is proposing a government-led JobKeeper-like scheme and perhaps the use of more online technology .
CR : What inspired you to develop this petition ? Did the COVID-19 pandemic play a factor in motivating you to do this ? OA : I was in one of my uni classes when we started the petition . We were broken up into small groups for class activities and for whatever reason , we just started talking about placements . And the more we talked about it , the more messed up we realised it was , especially when we take into account the sheer amount of hours we ’ re expected to do with little to no payment .
The more we talked about it , the angrier myself and the other members of my group became , and when we went back into the rest of the class , we brought it up with them and they supported us and were like , ‘ Yeah , you know what ? You have a point there . That is really messed up .’
In that little moment of rage there , that ’ s when we started this petition on a little bit of a fluke . And it took off , and we ’ ve had so much support from so many students across Victoria .
In regards to COVID-19 , that ’ s definitely part of it . I think you could argue that it is absolutely unethical – given the large amount of casual workers that were laid off , particularly during last year ’ s lockdown , many of whom were students , meaning that many of us went for around a year without any income whatsoever – I think now expecting us to give up the paid work we have regained since then for periods as long as a year is completely ridiculous .
I think young people in particular have so much pressure on them to be financially independent and these placements are just stopping us from doing that . We ’ re not asking for any money to go overseas , to go lay on sandy beaches . We ’ re just asking for a minimum wage so that we can survive while we complete them .
What would be the benefits of an employer paying a student the minimum wage for , say 100 hours of placement ? After all , it ’ s only two-and-a-half weeks in wages and perhaps they could , arguably , find some new talent . Do you expect that they ’ ll even consider this ? I think the length of the placement is incredibly important to consider . In my class , for example , we have two 500-hour placements . So we ’ re expected to work full-time for 12 weeks per placement with little to very little time to actually find any other source of income whatsoever during that period .
In regards to benefiting the employers as well , especially when it ’ s over such an extended time period , I think I can
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