Marie Sherlock (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

I am very pleased to propose this Bill to ban unpaid internships. We are all a product of the circumstances in which we were born and grew up and we all have our own stories about the chances and opportunities we got in life to get us to where we are now. While many of us would like to think that merit alone has brought us to where we are, research suggests that the opportunities and earnings we have at the early stage of our working lives go on to have quite a significant impact on our lifetime earnings and career progression. While for some young workers, unpaid internships are feasible because they can fall back on their parents' support or the support of another, for most workers - and I remember quite clearly my own experience when I graduated from university - working for free is simply not an option.

This is why the Labour Party wants to create a more level playing field in the world of work - a more level playing field for young people seeking work. This is why we are proposing this legislation. It is what we see as a long overdue step to ban what are called open market internships. It would follow the example of the UK, France, Australia and other countries that have legislation in place to tightly regulate and restrict unpaid internships. What we are proposing follows on from the call of the European Parliament in 2020 when it passed a motion calling for a ban on unpaid internships across all EU member states. This was in the context of a wider set of calls for supports for young workers and jobseekers.

Ultimately, we believe that all work undertaken must be recognised, respected and, at the very least, paid for at the level of the national minimum wage. That is why this Bill is called the National Minimum Wage (Payment of Interns) Bill. We have known for years that networks and connections are crucial to opening the doors for young workers to access work experience and employment opportunities. This is not a bad thing, but, of course, when those doors being opened is contingent on someone taking up an unpaid internship, that is when we have a fundamental difficulty. In particular, we know from research conducted by the International Labour Organization, ILO, that young workers from higher socioeconomic class backgrounds are more likely to access paid internships. It is interesting that the Social Mobility Commission in the UK observed in 2016 that work experience and internships are seemingly essential to getting a job. It states that nearly half of recruiters indicated that graduates with no previous work experience would have little or no chance of receiving a job offer. If those from less advantaged backgrounds are unable to access paid internships and cannot afford to do an unpaid internships, the odds are very clearly stacked against these young people before their careers even get started. It is for this reason that we are bringing forward the Bill. We believe that unpaid internships reinforce privilege.

We also believe that unpaid internships reinforce a lack of diversity across some sectors. We know that in some sectors in this country and many other countries, unpaid internships are a rite of passage. We think of the media sector, some parts of the arts sector, fashion, NGOs, the charity sector, law and even the world of politics. Plenty of Members take on interns and trainees. It is not quite clear whether all of them are paid. When the question gets asked about why we do not see greater diversity in certain sectors, we need to look at the route into those sectors. Unfortunately, we do not have in-depth research into internships in Ireland. We can look to the experience in the UK, however. Research there by the Sutton Trust found that while just 7% of the population is privately educated, some 51% of the leading print journalists and 74% of the top judges were privately educated. We obviously do not have comparable data for Ireland. While the figures in this regard may not be as high here, there is an important lesson in those from the UK.

Overall, there is limited international research on the impact on employability and earnings from what are termed open market internships, but we know from the ILO and other research that, on average, the research on this area does indicate that paid internships tend to lead to better outcomes. There is a chicken-and-egg effect here. When employers have to pay, they tend, on average to provide a better quality work experience, which is in their interest and the interest of the intern.

There are no reliable figures as to how many internships are undertaken here each year. However, I am struck by the words of Ross Perlin in his book Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economywhere he states: "it is striking that so much of our evidence for apprenticeships, in every period, is gleaned from legal records. By contrast the meteoric half century rise of internships has barely left a trace in official records." That is as true for Ireland as elsewhere because we do not have a comprehensive legal definition of internships and as I understand it, the CSO does not or effectively cannot pick up unpaid internships in its earnings surveys because the interns are not working to begin with. However, we know from the GradIreland annual survey of graduate employers, from our conversations with the Charities Institute, which I want thank for providing its insights into what is happening on the ground, and, most importantly, from talking to young workers, that internships are most definitely a major feature of early work life in Ireland.

When drafting our Bill, we carried out a survey. More than 200 young workers responded. A clear and recurring message from the responses was the exploitation experienced by young workers on unpaid internships. These are workers who have the same responsibilities as full-time workers and of whom there are the same expectations but whose employers do not feel compelled to pay them. Some people will ask whether this Bill will apply to every training internship. The answer is "No". We have set out a very narrow number of scenarios to which this Bill would not apply. If somebody is shadowing somebody in a workplace, that is very different to coming in the door on Monday morning to be told: "This is your desk. Be grateful you are here in the workplace at all. We don't need to pay you because you should be grateful to be here." That distinction is important.

I spoke earlier about the lack of diversity in certain sectors. One person we surveyed recalled that in his internships, he was surrounded by people exactly like him - middle-class and educated. This person said he could work unpaid and rely on his parents for financial support. He said that unpaid internships only serve in the context of gatekeeping corporate or public employment while using interns as free disposable labour. We often hear that companies might not be able to afford to take on a trainee yet on the ground, we know this is often not the case. One young lady told us that she interned for a well-known radio station for seven months and was not paid for the entire period. She did two full days per week, working 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. She was doing the work of a full-time employee - researching, booking guests, editing, etc. - and she was not getting paid. The station would not even consider paying her travel expenses. She stated that its top talent were getting paid absurd amounts of money. Most of us here have probably been on that radio station.

We know that the business model of some companies relies on unpaid labour.Another person said that internships helped them gain experience in a field where it would have been difficult to get work experience otherwise but they said their experience was that their internship was one in a long line of free labour availed of by their boss. They were unpaid for nine months in an entry level job that did not require expertise. Importantly, a paid employee was let go while they were on an internship there and the person took over their duties. This issue of the displacement of existing and paid employees to make way for an intern is a key one. The other key point we found in our survey is that unpaid internships are endemic in certain sectors. A young trainee solicitor told us that they had to beg someone to let them work for them unpaid. They worked for just under two years unpaid, never missing a day.

For us this is a simple Bill and it sets out a comprehensive definition of what an "intern" or a "trainee" is. It is somebody working more than 30 hours per week within a period of four or more weeks and somebody who does not necessarily have a contract of employment but who is referred to as a trainee or an intern. I spoke earlier about the narrow set of exemptions to this, which is important and which includes somebody working in a family business or somebody volunteering in the context of a charity. There is a distinction to be made between somebody volunteering and somebody working within a charity or another philanthropic organisation. If somebody has to undertake a traineeship in the context of their educational qualifications then that internship has to be linked to that specific educational qualification. There is a check and balance in the Bill such that if there is displacement of an employee then that is grounds to bring a case to the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC.

More than 75,000 people are due to graduate from third level institutions this summer. We want to ensure that each can compete for jobs on a level playing field. We want it to be based on their skills and ability and not on whether their parents or others can afford to pay their rent that they will take up these jobs. Our Bill is not about shutting down volunteering, the stuffing of envelopes for an hour or shadowing to better understand how a job is done; it is about ensuring that all work is paid and that there is an end to unpaid internships in this country.