The United Nations has always called for a ban on unpaid internships. In the recent years, some companies have been relying heavily on interns as a source of cheap labour. It has to be noted that some internship recruitments are not based on genuine love and appreciation of on-job training but rather a source of cheap labour. Several companies have managed to cut their employment budgets by significant percentages, especially companies that recruit l blue collar workers.
Companies that rely on the white collar powerhouse have been fuelled to recruit by their spree to freely utilise the intellectual capabilities of interns mostly through intellectual property rights infringement, which is also prevalent in tertiary academic institutions where the institutions and lecturers freely utilise students’ intellectual property without remunerating them.
It has to be noted, however, that due to the poor academic systems of the developing world, most students pursue careers they never intended to do. Because of that, these unpaid internships will pose as forced labour or some kind of slavery to them as they will be unwillingly doing the job for the sake of completing their studies. This has fuelled the occurrence of college dropouts, suicides, rampant drug abuse, intentional job-related injuries and other forms of self harm, and other work-related problems that emanate from the lack of peace of mind.
The idea of placing a ban on unpaid internships comes with its own repercussions. It has to be noted that the largest youthful population lies within the developing world. All this youthful population needs to have on-the-job training experience, and it is the same focus area that does not have a sound industrial system. Most developing countries are staggering in terms of economic development and interns end up desperately fighting for the few available unpaid internships. The few available companies are not willing to pay their interns. This creates an environment in which companies no longer recruit interns, hence significant number of students hardly have industrial attachment to further their knowledge.
With the already existing system of unpaid internships, a significant number of interns spend the entire internships doing duties that are not directly related to their field of work. Most companies have proved to be indifferent since they will be in need of free labour. Placing a ban on unpaid internships will require an overhaul of both the education systems and models adopted by the respective countries as well as the recruitment processes.
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