The MEAA's media director, Katelin McInerney, said the new guidelines were in response to numerous reported instances where students had been subjected to exploitative internship arrangements in the media industry.
Employment law solicitor, Philip Landau, points out that you also need to be careful to choose genuine volunteer roles, rather than exploitative unpaid internships.
We'll be discussing: How volunteering can help your career What roles are available How to distinguish genuine voluntary roles from exploitative unpaid internships How to use volunteering to your advantage in job applications The Q&A takes place in the comments section below this article.
She has also promised to stand up to politicians and deliver a series of employment campaigns "ending unpaid internships and exploitative work".
For the less affluent youth who rightly recognize that prestige is an invaluable quality for their CVs, the unpaid internship is inherently exploitative.
It seemed from recent decisions involving large media companies that if there was any benefit to the company, the internship was deemed exploitative.
Media internships seem to be especially exploitative: an NUJ survey last year found that eight out of ten interns had not been paid for work they had published, and a fifth said they had worked for more than three months under such terms.Many employers seem to think that by calling a job an internship they may ignore the national minimum wage.
According to Ross Perlin, author of Intern Nation, Foxconn may be running "the world's single largest internship program and one of the most exploitative".
The case against unpaid internships no longer needs to be made – it's inherently exploitative, open only to the few who can afford it and mostly illegal (with some exceptions).
For more internship abuses see graduate fog, a website that exposes exploitative companies and individuals.
