Interning

A Labour MP who claims to have “campaigned tirelessly for a living wage for all” is advertising for an unpaid intern to help her achieve this. Lyn Brown told the BBC she ‘“would like to pay everyone” in her office, but “did not have the resources to do so”’.

The BBC continued: “A Westminster source told [us] that the volunteer - who has already been recruited - will be a direct replacement for an existing, salaried staff member who is leaving for another job elsewhere.”

Many companies are replacing entry-level paid jobs with internships.  In a survey in April, 17% of company bosses admitted used interns as ‘cheap labour’. Only 12% knew this can be illegal.

The law is explained here. If you’re doing work, rather than just observing, you should be paid. ‘Work’ isn’t that well defined, but if an employer gives you tasks, and expects you to show up and do them well, you are probably working. It doesn't matter if you've agreed to work for free. There is no law allowing you to give up your right to minimum wage.

If you’re an intern at a magazine or paper writes an article, and it is published, this is clearly work. Last year, the National Union of Journalists surveyed its members. Of the interns who had work published, 80% were not paid.

There is some reason for optimism, though. In May, a website intern won £1,000 in back pay. Keri Hudson claimed to have ‘practically run’ an online review website called My Village, “training and delegating tasks, collecting briefs, scheduling articles and even hiring new interns”. After a while she was promised pay, but this later changed. For six weeks work, she was awarded the minimum wage and holiday pay.

Two years ago, Nicola Vetta was awarded at least £2,000 from London Dreams Motion Pictures, a film company which took her on as an expenses-only intern. She agreed to this, but after suing them for not paying her expenses, she decided to also take them to an employment tribunal for back pay. Ms Vetta was judged to be a worker, and so eligible for minimum wage.

The crucial principle was that agreements to work for free are not legally binding. If you're working, you're still entitled to the minimum wage. I was particularly interested by this point, as I’m an unpaid intern. Since February, I’ve been working at a magazine. They give me articles to write, and expect me to do them well. I do pretty much the same work as the other writers, who are paid for their efforts. 

Of course, I won't sue. I feel I've done well out of my internship. It's given me good experience, and, crucially, means I have something to do during the day. Since February, I haven't watched a single episode of Jeremy Kyle.

Volunteering

A spell of unemployment looks bad on a CV, especially if it coincides with a string of local murders. Experts advise unemployed people to do something useful with their time. This kind of insight shows how valuable experts are.

I work at Oxfam. It’s pleasant enough, and as a volunteer, I get the chance to buy things before they go out on the shelves. This may be mildly corrupt, but it keeps the work interesting.

Part of my job is to sort book donations, and chuck out anything in poor condition, as it wouldn’t sell. A colleague has slightly different criteria. He puts anything on Princess Diana straight in the bin, as he’s sick of her. Michael Moore is binned for being an ‘irritating prick’. Donated ‘misery memoirs’ are chucked straight away, as are Mills and Boon.

Once, we had to get rid of a nice bit of china. A volunteer was sorting a plastic bag full of donations, when there was a crash. “What’s that? Ming... Oh fuck.” Perhaps it was broken already. It wouldn’t surprise me, given some of the useless things people have donated. We’ve recently been given:

•        Used knickers
•          The G2 section of the Guardian
•          A pair of trousers with a suspicious stain
•          A locked suitcase without a key
•          Two books of sex-tips which smelt like they had been well used.

· 

Fire Starter

A Brighton-based accountancy firm called Crunch is advertising for a “PR/Journalist Fire Starter”.

The job involves “Researching, writing and distributing press releases to targeted media, collating and analysing media coverage, helping to organise events”, and similar tasks. There is no mention of setting fires.

The ideal candidate will have “experience as a journalist... experience of planning, developing and delivering end to end PR campaigns across a variety of communication channels, [an] understanding of social media and its PR leverage”, and so on.

The advert doesn’t mention fire-starting anywhere. Very few other PR jobs involve setting fires, and it’s hard to see how doing so would be useful to a firm of accountants. Isn’t the whole point of accounting to keep strict records of everything? I would imagine having someone starting fires in the office would be exactly what they wouldn’t want to happen.

Brighton has form in the field of confusing job ads; last year, the city council spent £14,000 on a recruitment campaign for four strategic directors (salary: £125,000 each). They spent seven thousand on creating a recruitment website called saynotostatusquo.co.uk. Its headline read “Status Quo fans need not apply”. The band’s manager called it a “direct insult to the capabilities of millions of Quo fans, many of whom are probably totally overqualified for these jobs.”

Cllr John Barradell eventually apologised, saying that “the question of musical preference will not be asked at interview; it is not relevant to the recruitment of these jobs”. He explained the title: “What we mean is that we want people who will come to the council with brilliant and original ideas about how to make residents' lives better.” Geddit?

Loco Toledo

An announcement on Southern Railway’s website says:

“Hola Amigo,

“Southern are giving 10% off Advance and Off-Peak tickets and they no charge you any fees, so you save mucho money. If you book ticket and no can go you get your money back with Southern's Rainy Day Guarantee. The weather good too, so why not go places by train. So many trains, so many places... I love the train. Go Loco. Go Southern.”

It’s an update by Southern’s mascot, Loco Toledo, a caricature Mexican.

A brief biography appears on his Facebook page:

“Hey amigo, my name is Loco Toledo - wrestler from a small village in Mexico. I take my wrestling name from the Spanish word for locomotive because trains are my number one passion.  In my village we have railway station, but the train it hardly ever comes. One year I wait so long for train, my moustache it grows all the way down to the ground.”

He regularly updates his Facebook profile in similarly bad English, referring to things Mexicans are supposed to like; tequila, chili, piñata, and fiestas.

Loco appears in a series of adverts, speaking in a strong Mexican accent. The character is played by Charlie Baker. As this video shows, Baker speaks English perfectly well, with no obvious accent:

Loco’s online postings are almost certainly done by a fluent speaker writing badly on purpose. If the writer actually is a Mexican struggling with English, it’s cruel of Southern not to bother getting someone to proofread them.

More outrageous than the casual xenophobia, though, is the fact someone is getting paid to do it. It seems mocking Mexicans can be quite profitable. Richard Hammond makes £25,000 per episode of Top Gear. This is the mean annual income for a full-time worker. May is on a modest £20,000 per show, while Clarkson is believed to make £1m a year from it. To earn their pay, they say things like this:

Gurus

I’m playing an online game where my character meets people and gets asked questions. It’s the first stage of the O2 recruitment process. On entering the site, I’m asked to choose a male or female avatar, which is then put in a cartoon world.

I go to the an O2 store, and talk to customers. For realism, silhouettes of pedestrians walk past the windows. Each customer asks fairly sensible questions, and I have a choice of four answers for each. The options are all quite similar, so I’m pretty much choosing at random.

Next I’m at a virtual coffee shop, talking to a friend. They ask: "How is the new job? What do you like most about it?" I’m given four options:

·         I love it! I enjoy working on the shop floor but I prefer the extra responsibility of doing the stock control in the back office.

·         I love it, the mix of being part of a team and remaining independent when it comes to dealing with customers is great for me.

·         I love it! I really enjoy dealing with customers, but like the fact that everyone has individual ownership of what they do.

·         I love it, I get to work with a great team and speak to customers all day!

Note the subtle hint: all O2s employees love their jobs. However, being able to predict what you’ll love about the job is crucial to being offered it.

Then, in the same coffee shop, I meet a colleague. Oddly, she wants to talk about work. "Have you heard about the new phone that's out next week?" An honest answer would be: “No. I’m not interested in phones. I barely use my phone. I’m here because I need a job.” Instead, I can pick from:

·         I know, I have been keeping track of the launch through a few forums. The view at the moment is that it's great.

·         I know, someone told me the other day and I had a look on their website. I can't wait to see it and show it to our customers.

·         Really? That's great, I can't wait to see it. I bet the customers will love it.

·         Oh yes, I heard something about that the other day, what do you know about it?            

All except the last option show an unhealthy level of interest in phones; one of these is clearly the right answer, but as they’re so similar, it’s pretty impossible to know which one. I take a guess, and move on.

My character then meets a friend at a zebra crossing. They ask: "So how are the people you work with? Have you made any new friends?"

·         Yes, it's great I've become good friends with a couple of the other advisors.

·         Yes, there's a couple of people I get on well with.

·         I like the people but I'm not really there to make friends.

·         Yes, there's one person I get on really well with. It makes work more enjoyable.

Here I’m again trying to guess the future: how many colleagues will I get on well with? Apparently, I’m a rubbish mystic. On finishing the game, I’m told: “It looks like the role of Advisor at O2 is not quite right for you. You can try for another O2 Advisor role in 3 months. The responses you gave suggest that you might not always focus enough on delivering a truly world class customer experience.”

I was allowed to apply for a different kind of role, though: an in-store technology expert.

The job title is ‘Guru’. I played again, and was rejected, though it wasn’t for giving my name as Idi Amin: “The responses you gave suggest that you are someone who approaches solving problems in a similar way most of the time. At O2, our Gurus have an incredible amount of creativity and are always coming up with a variety solutions [sic].”

Two rejections, and they hadn’t asked anything about my experience or background. If you think you’d make a better guru, apply here.

Salary

The Mail was typically angry last month. They reported that the average FTSE 100 boss makes 145 times their employees’ average salary. For once, they have a point: this kind of pay gap is outrageous.

However, many charities have even higher ratios. One employee of the British Heart Foundation makes over £190,000, while some work for free. Cancer Research UK uses volunteers, while employing 26 people on six-figure salaries, including one on £220,000.

I’m one of the 20,000 people who work, unpaid, in Oxfam shops, while the charity pays 32 staff at least £60,000; five of them make £100,000. In 2000, Oxfam complained of “the ever more obscene income gap separating rich and poor countries – and in growing income inequalities within countries”, though Oxfam itself has an infinite income gap. Even if they only paid their boss £1, it would still be infinite; the point is, a six figure salary is a lot for the head of an anti-poverty charity.

Apparently “Oxfam’s purpose is to overcome poverty and inequality all over the world including in the UK”, but not within their own organisation, of course. Someone from Oxfam explains why that’s fair here. If you’re convinced, check here for jobs at Oxfam, or here for other well-paid charity roles.