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The Forum > Article Comments > Budget internships both good and bad > Comments

Budget internships both good and bad : Comments

By Rob Cover, published 12/5/2016

If the task involves work that would ordinarily be undertaken by a paid employee as a form of production rather than participant-observation then it is work that should be paid at an employees' rate.

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I cannot understand the worries about the failure of employers to provide experience. In the 1950s I was thrilled to obtain work as an Articled Law Clerk at 4 pound per week as most Articled Clerks were paid 2 pound twelve shillings and sixpence. When I, after a few months, did get to dictate letters I was dictating to a secretary who was paid thirteen pounds per week.
Part of my duties in the early stages was to deliver letters in the city to save postage. It,at least taught me my way around the city.
By today's standards I was exploited. Who cares ! Without that " ground up" training I would never have become a lawyer.
It is time people rid themselves of the sense of entitlement. They should realise that when a young person starts work without experience they are useless and their efforts are largely worthless to the employer. It is not exploitation to pay nothing for something that is worth nothing. It usually takes longer to show someone how to do something than to do it yourself. Stop whingeing and get a dose of reality. A keen employee soon finds ways to grab experience and it soon rubs off on an ambitious employee.
Posted by Old Man, Thursday, 12 May 2016 9:10:06 AM
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Have to agree old man, not only do they gain useful skills but the self esteem connected to actually doing something of hopefully increasing value in return for a fistful of dollars!

Apart from new and employable skills; these folk will indubitably have early to bed early to rise, smarten up good habits, essential to hold down a real job, inculcated into them along with the missing self reliance?

An erstwhile idea, that ought to be road tested, before being howled down by the usual suspects?
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Thursday, 12 May 2016 9:37:45 AM
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Hmm. A slightly more sophisticated pink batts scheme? Turnbull helping out business? Anything the man comes up with has to be regarded with suspicion. Michaela Cash: carrying on like a 15 year old cheerleader, waving her arms and screeching alongside Turnbull when he announced he was siding with indendent owner/driver truckies. Very sophisticated and smooth, I don't think.

Morrison, treasurer because he helped dump Abbott, touts the sleazy scheme as "real working for the dole", and he is right. Get them off the books for as long as possible because there are no real jobs for them. Everything the new-left Coalition comes up with suggests desperation and total bewilderment.
Posted by ttbn, Thursday, 12 May 2016 10:11:07 AM
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I won't go into the boring details of the horrendous hours and minimal pay I received in the 60s as a trainee nurse. I'm sure someone will object on the grounds of irrelevance today.
So instead, I'll just say that currently I have an autistic teenage grandson who is on DSP, who goes to a local computer repair shop two mornings a week, for no pay, to learn how to repair computers and smart phones, in the hope it will lead to some future employment.
He loves going there, he is picking up skills that will help get a job in the future and just as importantly, he is learning to socialise with workers and the public and developing a work ethic.
He is so grateful for the opportunity he doesn't care about wages.
Posted by Big Nana, Thursday, 12 May 2016 10:14:04 AM
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I agree with the governments efforts to try harder to motivate young people into jobs, but I don't think this is the right way.
I can attest to Supermarkets definitely being a great first job though, and in the area of getting young people a bit of experience it's not a completely bad idea.
Ultimately, will the gains to the taxpayer from this plan outweigh the apparent costs?

But Scott Morrison is an idiot.

Coles and Woolies don't need incentive to hire 15 year olds, they happily do that anyway, so offering $4 jobs will just take away an award rate job for an internship and create more profits for shareholders.
(It also makes the grocery chains more powerful, who screw Australian producers)
Giving them money is stupid, you don't have to give them 1 cent.

Get on the phone to their CEO's
Hi, it's Scott Morrison here, just wondering how much profit you make off welfare?
That much? ..Really? My, oh my.
We'll, we're actually going to be needing that back....

Moral to the story - Do a real deal you useless sack of crap.
Posted by Armchair Critic, Thursday, 12 May 2016 2:31:28 PM
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Oh Big Nana and Old Man you had it easy!

When I were a lad we lived in a brown paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o'clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got home, out Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!

But you try and tell the young people today that...
Posted by Johnj, Thursday, 12 May 2016 9:27:37 PM
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Capitalist economies are in decline! Their markets are contrived to perform to rigid formula. For example, control of inflation.
Unemployment is a contrived set of numbers, designed to be politically acceptable, and designed to demonstrate stability: But official figures contradict the reality of a decimated manufacturing sector, Asian bound for cheap labour. It's this sector that contributes significant start up jobs for youth, which have gone missing.

Offering tax payer subsidised internships is simply another sign the system is broken, if it can be believed it's true intention is as stated. But, if all monitory rewards were removed from the scheme, and the intern system were to be included into high school curriculum, replacing the current school supervised work experience, honest benefits could be achieved, if schools continued to monitor the scheme, against unscrupulous operators in the workforce.

The long term unemployed, being outside most industry operatives, may be facilitated into the school system, and kept under its observation, as an additional funding source for vocational education.
Posted by diver dan, Thursday, 12 May 2016 10:11:49 PM
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I often hear the lament that to get a job one needs experience, but to get experience one needs a job. Internships are a great way to get a foot in the door, and even if the internship doesn't lead directly to employment, the experience means that you are more likely to get one later.

As Rob pointed out, internship is easy to exploit, but a properly vetted internship system can weed out most of the prospective abusers. I imagine an Uber like app that rates employers and employees on the skills they impart and their employment prospects, and below a certain score they are out of the system.
Posted by Shadow Minister, Sunday, 15 May 2016 9:29:51 AM
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Internships are great for providing an additional pair of helping hands at a fraction of the cost as compared to a full-time staff. However, interns can only assist with simple functions, else extensive training would be required in order to get them to perform tasks correctly and that would be a waste of time and resources.
Posted by webbrowan, Monday, 23 May 2016 7:49:40 PM
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Web,

This may be a newsflash, but even qualified graduates need time to learn the ropes and are not immediately useful. The point of an internship of say 3 months is to give the intern experience in the job that he aspires to (he might decide that it is not for him), the chance to gain some skills and the chance for a business to determine whether he is worth hiring.
Posted by Shadow Minister, Tuesday, 24 May 2016 8:50:27 AM
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