This is a rare special edition coming at you hot, partially because I’m bored and partially because I got upset. Don't get me upset or you too could become the subject of a newsletter with over 100!! readers.
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The District
For those that don't know, I spent last summer in D.C. Wow, I did exactly what every single other political science student in the country did. Every summer D.C. is filled with interns who landed a coveted or not job in the big ‘ole capital.
These are vitally important for anyone who wants to get a decent job coming out of college. Who you worked for/who you interned for on the Hill are asked in the first 10 seconds of almost any political interview. Certainly every single one that I’ve had.
Here’s the problem. That system absolutely sucks.
I was excited for my internship, I was doing policy work for a non-profit. Who doesn’t want to help a non-profit and build on their policy skills? Well, turns out it wasn’t exactly great.
For my time in D.C. I received a whopping stipend of $1,500, and I was one of the lucky ones. Living as frugally as possible, in one room of a shared house in a northwest D.C. neighborhood, my rent was $1,000 a month. Once again, recurring theme, I was one of the lucky ones there with my “low-rent.”
If you can math well, and I notoriously cannot, my rent was $1,000 a month and my pay (over 3 months) was $500 a month. Before any luxurious expenses (like food) I was already down $500 a month.
This doesn’t quite sound like a good deal, and of course it wasn’t.
It turned out to be a pretty miserable summer because D.C. isn’t a cheap city and it’s really tough to get by when you’re getting paid way, way, less than minimum wage.
Therein lies the shitty part, I could do all that even at a stretch because I’m a privileged white kid from a nice family. I had saved up money, I had a good support system, and a very supportive family. I was one of the lucky ones, and lucky just means privileged.
Thinking about how it was hard for me, even with all the privilege I have, only amplifies my understanding of how shitty the system is. For kids that don’t have savings, don’t have parents who can financially help them out if needed, and dont get paid the system doesn’t work in the slightest. They have no opportunity to get that experience and get those crucial early jobs.
A lot of the people who I see argue here say, “well it’s your fault for taking the internship, just don’t do it.” There’s another issue. If I didn’t have the lauded D.C. experience I wouldn’t have gotten the next job I had, which actually paid, which led to my current job. That’s the system.
It’s cyclical, in our broken system you have to build from the bottom, and underprivileged kids don’t have the opportunity to do so.
While writing this I realized that I don’t want to focus too much on me, because the narrative isn't about me. But it’s good to talk about this, because people don’t do it enough.
Too often it’s embarrassing and tough to admit. No one wants to be the one saying look how privileged I am, but to fix the system we have to at some point. Being able to take these opportunities and be comfortable is privilege, even if we’re afraid to admit it.
I’m the lucky one here, I made it and there are so many who never even had the chance. I don't feel bad about the fact that I made it, I’m glad I did. At the same time I have no problem admitting that I did because of the massive systemic advantages I got as a white kid from a well-off family.
I had the opportunity to mess around in high school and college because I didn’t need perfect grades in order to get the opportunities that I did. I didn’t need merit scholarships and financial aid just to have a shot at college. Those things were never in question for me, I was always college bound because I had everything going for me.
Meanwhile, there’s so many who didn’t have all those advantages and didn’t have the perfect system in place to go to college and not have to worry about it. Once again that’s the problem, and the internship structure reinforces it.
My internship worked out and I’m here working in tech and have a nice apartment and a guaranteed paycheck. Which is great, woohoo. That doesn’t change the fact that working for low-pay or unpaid is shitty and shouldn’t have had to happen, for me or for anyone.
The reason you see so many young white rich kids succeeding in politics with good jobs is because of this system. No one else even stands a chance and it starts at the bottom.
I remember a conversation I had with the head of the office I worked at and him being shocked that they weren’t paying me minimum wage. In D.C. at the time the minimum wage was $13.25 (also way too low but that’s a conversation for a different day), and they didn’t come close to that.
When I told him what they were paying me he said something along the lines of, “well that’s unfortunate.” It was unfortunate because I was skipping meals to pay rent and expenses. Even worse, is that the job was fully unattainable to so many who weren’t as privileged as I was. So many diverse voices are being shut out of politics because kids like me take these shitty jobs and reinforce the system. Not to mention of course the people that offer them.
I’ve worked a bunch of different jobs unpaid/paid way below minimum wage. Each time I think more and more about how not only privileged but illegal it all feels.
Surprise, most of the time unpaid internships are, in fact, illegal. For an internship to be legal the Department of Labor has a 6-part test to determine legality. The 6-factors are these:
The internship is similar to training that would be given in an educational environment.
The internship experience is for the benefit of the intern.
The intern doesn't displace regular employees and works under close supervision of existing staff.
The employer doesn't gain an immediate advantage from the intern's activities—and on occasion the employer's operations may be impeded by the intern's activities.
The intern isn't guaranteed a job at the end of the program.
The employer and the intern each understand that the internship is unpaid.
If we’re actually following this, there are probably no legal unpaid internships in the country, which is exactly what should be the case.
I’ve never had an unpaid internship where I didn't provide benefit to my employer.
That’s the point of an internship to me, to give the employer benefit in a learning environment. Doing so not only deserves but demands fair pay.
Thinking about it more, the more I resent the fact that I did take these jobs. It feels like a scab crossing the picket line, and I thought it was the best choice for me. It probably was, and that makes it feel all the worse. I was able to get to where I am today because of how easy it was for me, which is the whole problem.
The inane classism that comes with unpaid internships is beyond reason, and overwhelmingly minorities are shut out of the system again and again. There isn’t a catch-all solution to this but there’s an easy band-aid. If you can’t afford to pay an intern fairly, you don’t deserve to have an intern.
Pay your interns or don’t have them.
Congress
The worst offenders of all that are none other than the United States government, specifically Congress. Every semester and summer Congressional offices get a fresh crop of interns looking to make a name for themselves and gain experience, the problem is only 9% of Congressional offices pay their interns at all. That’s not only sad but it’s embarrassing, especially coming from Congress.
Last year the House finally decided to do something about this, and appropriated $20,000 per office a year to pay their interns. It is right there, costs them nothing, and helps fix this incredibly broken and quite frankly racist system.
Of course, here’s the catch: almost all House offices have decided to just not use this money. Even though it’s there and completely attainable they just haven’t bothered.
Salaries in Congress are determined by the individual representative, and it’s of course not out of their own pocket. Each House office gets around $950,000 a year to hire staff and run their office while every Senate office gets roughly $3 million a year.
Staffing a Congressional office is difficult, and we do need a comprehensive look at paying entry-level Congressional staff more, but today is intern day so we won’t go into that. That being said, with that allotment and the existing intern allocation, there is absolutely no excuse not to pay your interns.
If your office thinks that $20,000 is only enough to staff 4 or 5 interns in a given year, a reasonable estimate, congrats! Your office just landed 4 or 5 high-quality interns that don’t need to be only rich white kids. You shouldn’t be allowed to have any further unpaid interns, who bust their asses for a coveted recommendation and have to be rich in order to afford the internship. That is, again, where the system is broken.
Despite graduating, I still get plenty of emails advertising unpaid internships, and it kills me every single time knowing that they all get filled up.
Last week I got this great email from the office of esteemed Senator Sherrod Brown. Sen. Brown is renowned as a worker/everyman champion, who’s beloved by labor. That’s why it killed me to see this.
Congrats Sherrod, you’re not paying your interns and restricting your program to by-and-large privileged white kids. The working people’s champion!
Then there’s also the great reassurance of offering college credit, what a deal! The funny part is that for many potential summer interns, that’s even more unattainable.
The main material benefit possible from Sherrod’s internship program is the opportunity to get college credit, amazing! That is, until you realize that the credit isn’t free and it’s far from it.
At Ohio State, for example, the summer semester internship course for Political Science students is 3 credit-hours, and this internship would easily count for that. That class, during the summer semester, costs $995. To rephrase, your summer Congressional internship, which doesn’t pay, costs $995 just to even get credit for.
Thanks to the generosity of the Office of Senator Brown you can get experience(!), maybe a recommendation letter, and 3-course credits for the low price of almost $1,000 (not including rent, food, transportation, utilities, insurance, and everything else). All of that for working near full-time for 3-months in one of the most expensive cities in the country.
I’m sure lots of low-income Ohioans are going to be jumping all over this incredible opportunity.
Wait no, they’re not, because they can’t afford this and they shouldn’t have to. Paying interns fairly would open the doors of this to them, but the dear Congressman knows that he can get free rich kids and it’s easier. So that’s what he does.
That doesn’t sit well with me, and if this all made you angry as well, good. I’m glad. It makes me angry knowing how broken the system is and how little we talk about it. It isn’t ok and it doesn’t have to be this way.
So let’s try to fix it.
Do something
Today I made my first charitable contribution of the month and chipped in $18 (chai) to the good folks at Pay Our Interns. They’re the ones fighting on the front lines to fix this, and were influential in at least getting the House intern-pay appropriation. If you want to join me in donating, do it, the link is right below.
Let’s work on knocking out this bullshit, and don’t just settle into a broken system.
Thanks for reading today’s rant and I hope it was at the very least informative. As I like to say, if you aren’t mad you aren’t paying attention.
[Editor’s Note: The Belldumber team is proud that we actually pay our interns, despite having no revenue. We pay our editors more than some United States Senators and more than 91% of U.S. House of Representative offices pay their full-time interns. Imagine that.]