We need to dig beneath generic references to “toxic workplaces”

(image courtesy of clipart-library.com)

If you’ve been following media coverage of some of the not-so-wonderful aspects of the current American workplace, then you may have encountered the growing cacophony of references to “toxic workplaces,” “toxic work environments,” “toxic jobs,” and the like. (If you doubt me, do a few Google searches and you’ll quickly see what I mean!)

It appears that a mix of the following has given rise to generic references about toxic work settings:

• The MeToo movement;
• The pandemic and overwork of workers in essential job categories;
• The Great Resignation;
• Diversity, equity, and inclusion;
• Political and social discord;
• Bullying and incivility;
• Attention to bad bosses;
• Wage stagnation and benefit cuts;
• The recent dramatic uptick in union organizing.

Organizational behavior research from years ago taught me that different forms of workplace mistreatment tend to run together in packs. Thus, if you encounter a workplace rife with sexual harassment, then you’re quite likely to see other forms of interpersonal mistreatment flourishing as well. Contemporary news accounts often confirm this. For example, I’ve noticed that investigative pieces focusing on sexual misconduct in a given workplace often then segue into describing behaviors that might be labeled as bullying and/or incivility.

In any event, if we wish to create healthier, happier, and more productive workplaces, then we need to dig beneath the generic tag of toxicity and ask specifically what’s going on. The results may yield different problem areas and different fixes. Some bad behaviors may be intentional. Others will fall under the categories of negligence or dysfunction. Some may implicate employment and labor law violations. Certain concerns may be organizational in nature; others may be limited to a department or working group.

It’s also true that, on occasion, frequent complainers will invoke the language of toxicity to avoid supplying specific allegations that won’t hold up. Some will do so as attempted shields against accountability for their own inadequate work performances.

That said, I feel confident in saying that there is a fair amount of genuine unhappiness and undue stress in our workplaces during this snapshot moment in time. Some of the causes may be beyond the means of even well-intentioned organizations to remedy. But good employers will address worker concerns with attention to detail and an innate sense of fairness and dignity, while bad ones will dismiss reports of workplace toxicity and sometimes pay the consequences.

Internships (paid and unpaid) are back in the news

A welcomed, if long overdue announcement from the White House and an excellent New York Times article have brought important questions about unpaid internships back into the spotlight.

Last week, the Biden Administration issued a statement (link here) announcing that, starting this fall, its interns no longer will have to work for free. This is the first time in the history of this coveted opportunity that interns will be paid, thus opening the door to highly qualified applicants who come from modest financial means. Said the White House:

Too often, unpaid federal internships have been a barrier to hardworking and talented students and professionals, preventing them from contributing their talents and skills to the country and holding them back from federal career advancement opportunities. This significant milestone of paying White House interns will help remove barriers to equal opportunity for low-income students and first-generation professionals at the beginnings of their careers and help to ensure that those who receive internships at the White House—and who will be a significant part of the leadership pipeline across the entire federal government—reflect the diversity of America.

On the heels of the White House announcement comes “Why We Still Haven’t Solved the Unpaid Internship Problem” (link here), a very informative and wide-ranging piece on the barriers posed by unpaid internships, authored by Times personal finance writer Ron Lieber. He draws upon his own experience back in the 1990s to illustrate the key issue:

Millions of college students work for money each summer because they need it and their financial aid office tells them to go earn some. Then there are those White House interns from previous administrations — often white, sometimes rich and, by summer’s end, presumably very well connected — buffing their résumés.

Is the problem evident? It first clicked in for me in the early 1990s when my interview for a summer internship at Chicago magazine was going well until I found out that I’d be working for free.

When I started asking questions — what was a financial aid recipient like me supposed to do to make enough to afford school, and isn’t this all a form of classism? — the tenor of the meeting took a turn. I didn’t get the offer.

Paying tuition to work for free

Lieber asked me to comment on the exploitative practice of colleges and universities offering academic credit for internships in return for paying tuition:

Then there’s the glaring issue of schools that offer course credit for internships.

Schools benefit from this arrangement in two ways, said David C. Yamada, a professor at Suffolk University Law School in Boston and an expert on the rules around internships. First, intern-for-credit programs can allow institutions to collect tuition for that credit, even as students are working out in the world and don’t need classroom space or an instructor standing in front of it for four months.

Then, it allows a school to say it’s providing valuable career preparation. “If I hear another university invoke the phrase ‘Hit the ground running,’ I think I’m going to scream,” he said.

Previous work

I have written often on this blog about the intern economy, especially during a period several years ago, when the issue was getting lots of media attention due to lawsuits invoking minimum wage laws to challenge the widespread practice of unpaid internships. Those legal challenges yielded some disappointing court decisions but kept open the possibility of future lawsuits. They also served a valuable consciousness-raising function that caused some employers to reconsider their internship programs and begin paying their interns.

But the overall topic has faded from public view since then. I hope that the White House pronouncement and Ron Lieber’s article will help to remedy that and prompt a resurgence of attention.

I have written several law review articles examining the legal and policy implications of unpaid internships. You may freely access pdfs of those pieces:

• “‘Mass Exploitation Hidden in Plain Sight’: Unpaid Internships and the Culture of Uncompensated Work,” Idaho Law Review (2016) (link here) — Shorter piece emerging from a symposium of emerging employment law issues held at the University of Idaho College of Law.
• “The Legal and Social Movement Against Unpaid Internships,” Northeastern University Law Journal (2016) (link here) — Comprehensive overview and assessment of many major legal, policy, and advocacy developments concerning unpaid internships during a critical period between 2010 and 2016.
• “The Employment Law Rights of Student Interns,” Connecticut Law Review (2002) (link here) — Foundational article that helped to inform legal challenges to unpaid internships.

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Update: I was interviewed by KCBS news radio in San Francisco about the recent White House announcement that it will begin paying its interns. You may listen to that brief interview here.

 

Want to teach at UCLA? You can! (For free, that is…)

At first, I thought it had to be a spoof, or perhaps the latest example of misinformation intentionally unleashed on social media. But it’s real. I’m talking about a job listing from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) for a part-time teaching position in its Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. I’ve added emphasis in this quoted portion of the listing:

The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA seeks applications for an Assistant Adjunct Professor on a without salary basis. Applicants must understand there will be no compensation for this position.

Responsibilities will include: teaching according to the instructional needs of the department. Qualified candidates will have a Ph.D. in chemistry, biochemistry, or equivalent discipline and have significant experience and strong record in teaching chemistry or biochemistry at the college level.

The University of California, Los Angeles and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry are interested in candidates who are committed to the highest standards of scholarship and professional activities, and to the development of a campus climate that supports equality and diversity. . . .

That’s right, the lucky applicant chosen for this position will be “on a without salary basis.” Or, if that’s not clear enough, “Applicants must understand there will be no compensation for this position.”

To see the full ad, go to the Inside Higher Ed listing or directly to the UCLA listing.

Beyond unpaid internships

Long-time readers of this blog may recall that I have done a considerable amount of scholarship and legal advocacy work challenging the exploitative practice of unpaid internships. (Go here for a summary.) I’ve also taken a jabs at a related practice, that of “non-stipendiary fellowships” being offered by artistic and creative organizations.

In 2016, I participated in a symposium on equality in employment, sponsored by the University of Idaho Law Review. I spoke about unpaid internships and contributed an essay titled “‘Mass Exploitation in Plain Sight’: Unpaid Internships and the Culture of Uncompensated Work,” which may be freely accessed here. In the piece, I criticized an emerging set of practices that “undermines the basic exchange of compensation and decent treatment in return for work rendered.”

In addition, across the U.S., colleges and universities are reducing the number of paid full-time teaching positions and replacing them with part-time, low-paid appointments that come with little — if any — job security. UCLA has taken this exploitation to a new level, by offering a part-time teaching position and making it abundantly clear that no pay will be available in return for the professor’s hard work.

Perhaps UCLA considers this a form of pro bono, public service. Now, I’m fine with volunteer service and try to do my share of it. But this teaching announcement is materially different than a solicitation for volunteers. Among the applicants will be newly-minted Ph.D.s trying to gain credentials to attract full-time academic employment. Some may be barely making ends meet. And yet UCLA claims to value “a campus climate that supports equality and diversity”?

I hope that UCLA reconsiders this job announcement and replaces it with one that ensures compensation. Surely a university with an international reputation can scrounge together sufficient funds to pay its faculty, yes?

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Story update, Sunday March 19: Since the original story broke in the Twitterverse, two explanatory threads are developing. The first is that UCLA has taken down the ad and added an apology plus explanation suggesting a more legitimate purpose for it:

One academic posted that the position is to help a Ukrainian scholar who would be paid through a non-profit agency.

The second thread is coming from the UCLA adjunct faculty union and its supporters, saying that UCLA has used unpaid positions before — using the same ad language — and has been called out for it. The union calls it a union-busting job listing and suggests that even if there’s a defensible intention, the listing itself misclassifies a position that should be paid (and thus, presumably, violates the collective bargaining agreement):

Best scenario is that if this is part of a legitimate (and laudable) attempt to help a scholar fleeing the war, then UCLA’s use of ad language that has triggered legitimate objections before and its vague explanation for the ad didn’t help matters. It also would’ve been appropriate to consult with the union on this, which apparently wasn’t the case.

 

Story update, Tuesday, March 22: After facing an outcry via social media, UCLA issued a statement clarifying that all adjunct faculty will be compensated. Scott Jaschik reports for Inside Higher Ed (link here):

It turns out the University of California, Los Angeles, will actually pay all its adjuncts who teach.

The university on Monday afternoon issued a clarification of a job advertisement seeking an adjunct, without pay. And the university apologized.

“A recent job posting by UCLA Chemistry and Biochemistry contained errors and we are sorry. We always offer compensation for formal classroom teaching. We will do better in the future and have taken down the posting, which we will make sure is correctly written and reposted. Our positions are open to all applicants,” read a statement by Bill Kisliuk, director of media relations at UCLA.

MTW Newsstand: October 2019

Every month, the “MTW Newsstand” brings you a curated selection of articles relevant to work, workers, and workplaces. Whenever possible, the materials are freely accessible. Here are this month’s offerings:

Eric Kuelker, “How Psychological Injuries Cause Physical Illness — And How Therapy Can Heal It,” Mad in America (2019) (link here) — “You and your loved ones now have a new future. Whether the psychological injury was early in your life or recent, whether your boss bullied you, or your business partner stole from you, whatever the nature of your emotional wound, a healthy new future is possible. Torn DNA can be woven together again, blood pressure can drop, gray matter in the brain can grow, and you can greatly reduce the risk of 7 of the 10 leading causes of early death.”

Michelle R. Smith, “Why many employees feel devalued even in booming job market,” AP News (2019) (link here) — “Economic research, government data and interviews with workers sketch a picture of lagging wages, eroding benefits and demands for employees to do more without more pay. The loyalty and security that many say they once felt from their employers have diminished, and with it some measure of their satisfaction.”

A. Pawlowski, “Why older women will rule the world: The future is female, MIT expert says,” NBC News (2019) (link here) — “Older women can sometimes feel like they’re invisible to workplaces and businesses, but they’re actually the trailblazers others should be watching, says Joseph F. Coughlin, director of the AgeLab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of the new book, “The Longevity Economy: Unlocking the World’s Fastest-Growing, Most Misunderstood Market.” As people get older, the future is female, he argues, with women better prepared for life after middle age than their male peers.”

Karen Weese, “America’s fastest growing jobs don’t pay a living wage,” The Week (2019) (link here) — Over the next 10 years, the occupations with the most job growth in America will not be the techy jobs that most of us think of as the jobs of the future, like, say, solar-panel technicians or software engineers. Instead, they’ll be the jobs held by the women in Hyde-Miller’s community center neighborhood: home health aide and personal care aide. More than one million new aides will be needed over the next decade, in addition to the 3.2 million already in the field, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday. What’s more, six of the 10 occupations providing the most new jobs over the next decade will pay less than $27,000 a year. That’s more than 15 million people, working hard at jobs that simply don’t pay the bills.”

Sherri Gordon, “6 Reasons Why People Are Bullied at Work,” verywellmind (2019) (link here) — “If you have experienced workplace bullying, you may be asking yourself “why me?” And you are not alone: workplace bullying impacts 54 million Americans every year. Here are some common reasons why people are targeted by workplace bullies.”

Bill Chappell, “U.S. Income Inequality Worsens, Widening To A New Gap,” NPR (2019) (link here) — “The gap between the richest and the poorest U.S. households is now the largest it’s been in the past 50 years — despite the median U.S. income hitting a new record in 2018, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau. . . . While many states didn’t see a change in income inequality last year, the income gap grew wider in nine states: Alabama, Arkansas, California, Kansas, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Texas and Virginia.”

Unpaid internships and the intern economy: Latest work

A look at unpaid internships and the intern economy

As steady readers here are aware, for many years I’ve been engaged in scholarship, public education, and advocacy concerning the oft-exploitative practice of unpaid internships. I’d like to provide a quick update on my latest activities in this realm.

I just posted to my Social Science Research Network (SSRN) page a short law review essay, “‘Mass Exploitation Hidden in Plain Sight’: Unpaid Internships and the Culture of Uncompensated Work,” a followup to an excellent symposium on employment law issues hosted by the Idaho Law Review last year. For those who would like a more compact scholarly summary of recent major legal and policy developments concerning the employment rights of interns and the larger implications of the burgeoning “intern economy,” this piece will provide it. You may freely download it from my SSRN page.

Brief filed by attorneys at Lieff Cabraser

Wang v. Hearst Corporation is one of the most prominent legal challenges to unpaid internships, and the case is currently pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Recently I agreed to be a party to a “Friend of the Court” brief supporting the legal position of the unpaid interns, organized by the National Employment Law Project and authored by Rachel Geman and Michael Decker, attorneys at the law firm of Lieff Cabrasser in New York City. Rachel and Michael did a wonderful job on the brief, seamlessly incorporating suggested additions from parties into their already superb draft. (You may go to this link for a pdf of the brief.)

Enjoying a post-filming dinner with Nathalie Berger and Leo David Hyde

Yesterday I had the pleasure of being interviewed for a documentary project on unpaid internships being produced by Nathalie Berger and Leo David Hyde of Switzerland. During a whirlwind North American trip, Nathalie and Leo are conducting interviews with activists, writers, policy analysts, and scholars on the social, economic, and legal aspects of unpaid internships. Their documentary will paint a picture of the intern economy on a global scale. I was so impressed with their knowledge and depth of understanding of this topic, and I’m very excited to watch this project unfold.

Why this unpaid internship stuff should matter to everyone

As I wrote last week, a federal appeals court ruling in Glatt v. Fox Searchlight Pictures, Inc., reversing a lower federal court decision holding that two unpaid interns hired by Fox Searchlight Pictures were entitled to back pay under minimum wage laws and certifying a class action on behalf of other interns hired by the company, was a setback for a growing intern rights movement.

In practical terms, the decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit invites private employers and universities to collaborate on schemes that (1) create unpaid internships; and (2) charge students tuition for the “privilege” of doing unpaid work. The ruling also makes it harder for unpaid interns to band together to challenge unpaid internships via class action lawsuits.

Basically, the “intern economy” that has been growing by leaps and bounds during the past three decades got a big judicial stamp of approval last week. It may be only temporary, but the Second Circuit’s ruling sends a bigger message that the label of “intern” is now being accorded its own legal meaning, one with a lesser status than that of a regular old “employee.” By slapping the intern label on what otherwise would be deemed an entry-level job, employers can potentially be exempt from paying even the minimum wage.

“Primary beneficiary” test

The Second Circuit adopted a “primary beneficiary” test to determine whether interns should be exempt from minimum wage laws. In other words, if someone is labeled an intern by an employer, we will now engage in a balancing test to determine who gets the better of the deal, the intern or the employer, taking into account a laundry list of “intangibles” such as training, networking opportunities, and so forth. It’s noteworthy that the Court said a lot less about the intangible benefits of interns to employers, such as training, mentoring, and evaluating the next generation of new people into a profession, in addition to the tangible work contributions that many interns provide.

Furthermore, it’s clear that these hedgerows to a paycheck are being created only for those trying to get their careers off the ground. Although many new high-level managers and professionals also go through training periods and enjoy networking opportunities, they will not be subject to this legal test.

Why this matters to all of us

This litigation, and the many other pending and settled lawsuits concerning unpaid internships, obviously are of direct importance to students and recent graduates. However, we all should be paying attention to this, because these cases are raising the fundamental question of whether people have a legal right to be paid for their work.

We are going down that slippery slope. Whereas internships were once largely confined to graduate-level professional programs, they now have become staples for undergraduates as well. Even more alarming is the expansion of unpaid internships into the post-graduate stage, sometimes dressed up under the label of “non-stipendiary fellowships.”

The work-for-free creep has already entered certain vocations with a vengeance. Last year I wrote about how so many writers, journalists, and other creative folks are struggling to find gigs that pay them for their labor. I quoted an extended editorial essay titled “The Free and the Antifree: On payment for writers,” in which the editors of N+1 magazine examined the challenges of economic and technological systems conspiring to make it difficult for capable writers, journalists, editors, and other wordsmiths to get paid for their work and to earn a living. (The N+1 piece favorably cited Ross Perlin’s Intern Nation (2011) — touted on several occasions in this blog — as one of the first books to come out of the “antifree movement.”)

So…for anyone who thinks this unpaid intern stuff is someone else’s problem, please think again. This is all about the dignity of being paid for one’s labor, and the resolution of these lawsuits will help to determine if the door has been opened or closed to more and more unpaid work.

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Media Coverage

Forbes.com

I was quoted in this Forbes.com piece by Susan Adams on the Court of Appeals ruling:

Agrees Suffolk University law professor David Yamada, who wrote the first law review article on unpaid internships back in 2002, “All the factors they drew up were really without legal authority.” In fact the judges cite no case law for their checklist. “They apparently decided to invent something new here, which is surprising at the appellate level,” says Yamada.

Bloomberg Law

I appeared on June Grasso’s radio program for a 20-minute segment, along with entertainment law professor Jay Dougherty. It was a lively, collegial exchange that allowed for some substantive give-and-take about internships and compensation. You may access the link here.

From the “Hacker Ethic” to the “Antifree Movement”: On paying writers and journalists for their work

How have we reached the point where so many writers, journalists, and other creative folks are struggling to find gigs that pay them for their labor?

I submit that some of the core roots of our current situation can be traced to the early, idealistic days of computer hacking.

An early chapter in Steven Levy’s brilliant Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (1984) includes the story of MIT students who, during the late 50s and early 60s, devoted enormous amounts of time to tinkering with early computers on their campus. They honed a sort of attitudinal manifesto on the emerging power of computing that Levy would tag the “Hacker Ethic” (pp. 39-49):

• “Access to computers…should be unlimited and total”
• “All information should be free”
• “Mistrust Authority — Promote Decentralization”
• “Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position”
• “You can create art and beauty on a computer”
• “Computers can change your life for the better”

There’s a ton of idealism in these precepts. It imagines a world transformed by emerging computer technologies, and it reflects the early fascination with, and anticipation of, what digital power could do for society.

But there’s one point that, with the gift of hindsight, raises special concern: All information should be free. The Hacker Ethic didn’t get around to asking the logical question, If all information is free, then who will pay the producers and creators of this information?

Read it for free

The excellence of Levy’s book notwithstanding, “Hacker Ethic” never caught on as a branding term to help characterize the early age of computing. However, as the Internet became part of our everyday lives in the mid-to-late 1990s, we quickly assumed that the Information Highway was a freeway for us to read, print, and download without charge.

Sure, we expected to pay for products marketed via e-commerce, but when it came to information online such as articles in newspapers and magazines, the opposite was the case. Concededly, publishers of periodicals could not have anticipated how sharing articles from their print editions eventually would morph into people trading in their hard-copy subscriptions for free online access. But in lightning fast time, it was so.

As this trend became a stampede, conventional newspapers and magazines that had long been sustained by advertising found those dollars drying up. As subscribers dwindled and e-commerce proliferated, once-loyal advertisers took flight.

An emerging antifree movement?

This expectation of free online information has massive labor implications. If people aren’t paying for the articles they read online, then how are those who produce the content being paid for their work?

In an extended editorial essay titled “The Free and the Antifree: On payment for writers,” the editors of N+1 magazine examine the challenges of economic and technological systems conspiring to make it difficult for capable writers, journalists, editors, and other wordsmiths to get paid for their work and to earn a living:

If this was not yet a movement, it was definitely a mood—antifree—and it was fighting a more difficult battle than the proponents of free had. The Free movement had a few professorial spokespeople and millions of adherents; antifree was a small group of interested artisans speaking up for the dignity of being gainfully employed. As antifree grew beyond the small world of left-wing blogs, it attracted 25-year-olds who objected to being paid $50 by a corporate website that presumed them lucky to get the experience. It attracted veteran journalists who balked at being asked to write for a large, profitable magazine’s website for chump change. And it attracted unpaid interns, who at profitable media corporations (ranging from Condé Nast to Gawker), actually filed suit for violations of labor laws. These were individual stories, but they added up. The entities that had once supported journalists and writers were now doing their best not to pay them for the simplest of reasons: they could get away with it.

The N+1 piece favorably cites Ross Perlin’s Intern Nation (2011) — touted on several occasions in this blog — as one of the first books to come out of the antifree movement.

Back to basics

At times, advocates for intern rights have been greeted with derision, as if calls for the minimum wage in return for work rendered were somehow the yammerings of entitled young people. In reality, here in the early 21st century, the emerging antifree movement is about returning to a familiar, simple labor theme: People should be paid for their work. It may be laboring with mouse and keyboard rather than with pick and shovel, but it is work nonetheless.

The dignity of a living wage

Across America, labor activists and other progressives are calling for a higher federal minimum wage, often citing the personal financial challenges that confront low-paid retail and fast food workers. The current minimum wage is $7.25/hour, though some states have adopted a slightly higher one. Advocates are calling for a new minimum wage ranging from $10.00 to $15.00 an hour.

Whenever a minimum wage hike is proposed or debated, opponents claim that doing so will reduce jobs. At the far end of that spectrum, virulent opponents of any minimum wage law claim that such government mandates are “job killers.”

Yes, I suppose if you got rid of the princely $7.25/hour minimum wage, you could take the same hourly rate and pay three people $2.00/hour and still have a $1.25/hour as a bonus for the CEO. But that’s not “job creation,” it’s exploitation. Take away the minimum wage and you get a labor situation like that in Bangladesh, where wealthy corporations pay factory workers a pittance and subject them to dangerous working conditions. (After all, American factory jobs moved overseas to avoid paying workers good wages and benefits!)

Current minimum wage and low-wage earners often find themselves having to access public benefits such as food stamps to get by. The low minimum wage means, in effect, that American taxpayers are indirectly subsidizing corporations such as Walmart and McDonald’s and their shareholders by supporting living expenses for workers who can’t afford to live on their paltry paychecks alone.

Above all, we need to frame this debate in terms of human dignity. Okay, so maybe that high school senior from an upper middle class family who works part-time to earn spare cash can get by on $7.25/hour. But for those supporting themselves and others, a full-time job at least should pay for the basics. In fact, let’s remember that Congress’s intent behind enacting the federal minimum wage law during the heart of the Great Depression of the 1930s was to provide a living wage. It’s a shame that we have to invoke the hardship of our last systemic economic meltdown to remind ourselves of that.

Google: Awesome and not-so-awesome

Very few individuals have either all good or all bad qualities. Hopefully we have more of the former and less of the latter.

The same goes for companies, and few capture these extremes more than Google.

On the one hand…

I am not a Google power user, so I haven’t even started to tap its many features. But I am continually blown away by its capabilities as a search engine. In my experience it ranks multiple levels above its competitors.

I can type in bits of phrases and find exactly what I’m looking for. I can go on fishing expeditions and discover incredibly useful and interesting things. The other day I typed in an airport location to a home address, and up popped super accurate driving directions to help direct a cab.

In sum, Google has redefined how we obtain information. Its programmed “intuition” is brilliant.

Google also appears regularly on lists of the best employers, especially among high tech companies. It ranked no. 1 on the 2013 Fortune list of the 100 best employers. It topped a 2012 LinkedIn survey of most desired global employers. If you have the right skill sets, then this is a destination of choice.

Indeed, even Google interns make a fantastic salary. As reported by Glassdoor.com, software engineering interns are paid an average of over $6,000/month. This is a far cry from mega-gobs of unpaid internships offered by so many other employers that could surely afford to pay their interns.

On the other hand…

If you don’t have those high demand skills, however, your compensation prospects at Google may not be so great. For example, Laura Sydell reports for National Public Radio on how wealthy Bay Area companies like Google contract with firms that pay low wages to provide basic services:

Santa Clara County, Calif., is home to Google, Apple and eBay. So it’s no surprise that the median household income was $91,000 a year in 2012, one of the highest in the country. Yet one-third of the households in the county don’t earn enough for basic living expenses, even when they work at some of those big tech companies.

Take Manny Cardenas, a security guard at Google who lives in low-income housing in San Jose and commutes regularly to Google’s sprawling corporate campus in Mountain View. Cardenas, a stocky, soft-spoken 25-year-old, has been working as a part-time security guard at the search giant for the past year and a half. . . .

. . . Cardenas earns $16 an hour, has no benefits and never gets more than 30 hours a week. In a good month, he brings home about $1,400. If Cardenas didn’t live with his mother, he says, he probably wouldn’t have a roof over his head.

Granted, $16 an hour would be a living wage in other parts of the country. But it doesn’t go far in northern California. Because of the contracting arrangement, those wages will never be factored into Google’s average compensation figures. Google could, if it wished, exercise its economic clout and work only with contractors that pay living wages and benefits.

Unfortunately, Google also is using its abundant monies to advance a policy agenda furthering the interests of the wealthy and powerful. As reported by Nick Surgey for BillMoyers.com, Google funds a bevy of far right think tanks and advocacy groups:

Google, the tech giant supposedly guided by its “don’t be evil” motto, has been funding a growing list of groups advancing the agenda of the Koch brothers.

Organizations that received “substantial” funding from Google for the first time over the past year include Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, the Federalist Society, the American Conservative Union (best known for its CPAC conference) and the political arm of the Heritage Foundation that led the charge to shut down the government over the Affordable Care Act: Heritage Action.

In 2013, Google also funded the corporate lobby group, the American Legislative Exchange Council, although that group is not listed as receiving “substantial” funding in the list published by Google.

Assessing

Are remarkable high tech innovations incompatible with a public policy agenda that embraces the common good? Can attractive salaries and model work environments for highly skilled workers co-exist with a living wage and benefits for all?

Socially responsible capitalism means taking the moral high road, even when there’s no government regulator forcing you to do so. When private companies enjoy great success, they can opt to share their bounties and support a rising tide that lifts all boats. Google has immense economic and, hence, political power. Wouldn’t it be great if the company opted to become a standard bearer for ethical, inclusive business practices?

Democratic National Committee: Pay your interns

While Democrats are leading the call for a higher minimum wage, their own Democratic National Committee doesn’t bother paying its interns the current one.

The DNC is currently accepting applications for 2014 internships. The work done by interns may vary, but note how the DNC itself describes interns’ contributions as being “vital” to its daily functioning:

Intern responsibilities and tasks vary depending on department, but all interns play an important role in their departments.  While all interns will perform some administrative tasks, making copies — filing, etc. — the work you do is vital to the day to day functions and department projects DNC staff are working on.  For example:

Communications allows interns to work closely with the media, collecting daily news clips, formatting press releases, and monitoring television appearances by Democratic surrogates.

Unfortunately for those who aren’t from well-to-do families or don’t have other sources of funding, the DNC internships are unpaid. While a small stipend may be available to a limited number of interns, most will have to fend for themselves.

I’m a big supporter of people volunteering to support their favorite candidates. But I also think that office interns for political organizations should be paid for their work. If the DNC wants to widen opportunities for all to see the inner workings of party leadership and to become familiar with this side of the political process, then it will find the money to pay at least the minimum wage to its interns. In doing so, it will send a valuable message about walking the talk.

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Hat tip on DNC listing: Ben Pianko