Interns of the World, Unite !

How about an unpaid and quasi-mandatory job? Souds like exploitation and slavery? It's called an internship. It's unpaid most of the time or people get a small portion of a low salary (like $500 a month). You have to do it to get a job in some high-education fields, like international relations or marketing. No experience, no job - but an internship, sometimes yes.

And if you think "They shouldn't take the job if it doesn't suit them", you forgot why unions were created in the first place. Alone, no one can beat the system. If you turn it down, you find yourself at home, jobless.

That's why it's good news to hear that the French interns are protesting against their situation. There's been strikes in France against this modern exploitation.

"The Web site organizing the strike, www.génération-précaire.org, claims that French companies are using poorly paid interns to fill jobs that otherwise would go to full-time employees, thereby limiting the ability of young people to secure meaningful employment." (Interns in the French Firms Stage Protest, International Herald Tribune, Nov. 24, 2005)

Hopefully this movement will spread to cities full of interns like Geneva and Washington.