Liberal Hollywood again scratches its collective head after failing to nominate any black actors for the Oscars. Racial biases are deep-seated in our culture even within the Academy, but the root problem is that Hollywood — from the assistant casting directors to the billionaire producers — is mostly white and from well-off families. Those from connected families will always have a leg up, but in the movies, like many industries, incoming workers must serve an unpaid indenture to land a real job. And as long as there are few black writers, directors and casting agents, there will continue to be a dearth of great acting opportunities.
These unpaid internships, especially away from home, are only feasible if families can float the costs of living and if students don’t need the spending money from a typical summer job. And because these families disproportionately are white, the ranks of Hollywood are, too. The same problem pervades the rest of the entire entertainment industry, publishing, and politics — all industries with a disproportionate cultural footprint.
We use fancy future earnings charts to encourage kids to take out massive student loans. But we don’t tell them these high-earning jobs often require the “experience” of an unpaid internship. Of course, if these internships truly were educational — a medical student’s clinical rotation, for example — the system would be more palatable. But as a lawsuit by unpaid interns working on the production of the “Black Swan” demonstrated, all too often these interns are just glorified copy machinists and coffee retrievers.
We have replaced the traditional paid corporate training programs with an unnecessary hazing ritual. Even worse, companies get students and recent grads to do menial work by paying them a below-minimum wage “stipend” for an internship with a glorified title. It is illegal under federal law to fail to pay interns minimum wage and overtime if they are effectively taking the work from other workers without any serious educational benefit. But almost none of the tens of thousands of illegally underpaid interns ask for their rightful pay because they fear that this will kill their ability to leverage the internship for that entry-level job. And the very fact that people do these menial jobs for free gives the companies no incentive to create the entry-level, paid training programs that gave working class and GI Bill students the way into the post-war professional class.
As a first step, corporate recruiters should admit a student who spent the summer bagging groceries living with her parents probably learned as many relevant skills as the typical financial analyst intern. Regulators should enforce the law so that only internships that are genuinely educational can remain unpaid. This will cause employers either to pay students for menial work, which at least will give an entre to students who need a summer job, or they can create serious training programs for whom the student is the primary beneficiary. But schools must make these educational work programs integral to the curriculum and truly available to even disadvantaged students.
St. Joseph’s College in Standish just launched a pioneering experiential learning program called Connections. The small Catholic college recognized its student body came mostly from working-class families that could not take advantage of unpaid internships. These families, almost all on financial aid, were still paying tens of thousands of dollars for an education that left them at a disadvantage to their better-off peers with “work” experience.
The program, like that of many colleges, gives academic credit for an internship, but there are two important innovations. St. Joseph’s requires the program sponsor to show that the internship will legitimately benefit the student’s academic and professional growth, and more crucially the program offers a stipend of up to $2,000 to the student during the internship. While much of this $2,000 no doubt originates in tuition fees and ultimately student loans, it is money well spent because there is a direct correlation to higher future earning power that makes the loan payments more manageable.
In the past few decades we have greatly increased the opportunities for disadvantaged students to go to college. But menial unpaid internships operate as a glass floor to keep those students off the fast track, while at the same time taking jobs away from entry-level employees and unskilled assistants. The equality of opportunity at the heart of the American dream requires giving all students affordable access to genuine professional training. Otherwise a small slice of privileged Americans will continue to disproportionately affect business, politics and entertainment.
Andy Schmidt is a workers’ rights attorney in Portland. He can be reached by email at andy@maineworkerjustice.com.