With younger Americans facing sticker shock at the cost of health insurance under ObamaCare, the president and other Democrats have pivoted to pushing for a higher minimum wage. They probably have good intentions, but sometimes a minimum wage can kill jobs, especially for younger people. Here’s one example.
Condé Nast recently shut down its legendary internship program in the wake of a class-action lawsuit by two former interns who claim that the publishing giant violated the Fair Labor Standards Act by paying less than minimum wage.
Behind this suit (and more against Warner Music, NBC Universal, Viacom, Sony and others over their intern programs) is an activist group, The Fair Pay Campaign. According to Mikey Franklin, the group’s 23-year-old co-founder, “The culture of unpaid internships is just ruining the American Dream.”
It’s encouraging to see a European (Franklin is British) try to protect our core national ethos, but he and his fellow activists (and their labor-union backers) have it precisely backward. Internships, like Condé Nast’s, are all about the American Dream.
Like any apprenticeship, internships can launch careers by providing experience and networking opportunities. They offer a place to start, and they are a means to learn, early, the lesson that you earn success not just through hard work but also by demonstrating your value to others.
The rewards of these programs can be so great that, contrary to Franklin’s quest to require that these jobs pay minimum wage, some of them are worth paying for. That’s effectively what I did as an unpaid intern last summer at The New Yorker magazine — that is, I “paid” for that internship by sacrificing the money I could have earned from a paying job.
It was worth the price. I got access to the highest levels of publishing in the gritty process of getting out a weekly magazine. Editor-in-Chief David Remnick and others hosted meetings for the interns to learn the business. Adam Rapoport and Margaret Russell, the editors-in-chief at Bon Appétit and Architectural Digest, also mentored us.
What price might this experience have captured on the open market, if I could’ve sold my slot before the summer began? Surely a large one — since the Condé Nast’s program was providing us value, not exploiting us as Fair Pay claims.
The program was a win-win for all. Interns received great exposure and experience. Condé Nast, in return, got a cheap, early look at a group of ambitious college students that editors could evaluate for permanent employment. All interns were over 18, so it was a fair and transparent bargain between adults.
Which is why the lawsuit is so troubling.
What does it say of the hundreds of interns who’d accept payment if the class-action suit prevails? To have understood the bargain, reaped its rewards and then profit in the program’s demise just feels, at a minimum, tawdry.
And what about the two interns who made the lawsuit possible? Surely they didn’t realize in some sudden epiphany that they’d been victimized by the program; lending their names to the suit smells of opportunism.
And how exactly can the Fair Labor Standards Act (which quite properly protects child labor) be so prescriptive as to define which internships are acceptable in the marketplace and which aren’t?
And what would a successful suit say about college students’ freedom, as adults, to work where we wish, under the economic parameters of our choosing?
Fair Pay labeled Condé Nast “childish” for shuttering the program, implying that the decision was emotional. It seems to me that Condé Nast made a financial decision: The cost of the program under a minimum-wage regime just isn’t worth it.
As Condé Nast and others kill their programs under threat of lawsuits, one thing is clear: The effort to impose a minimum wage can actually eliminate jobs, and the opportunity for better jobs down the line.
So thanks, Fair Pay Campaign, for your efforts to get me paid for my summer’s toil, but I’d rather honor the understanding I had with my employer and live with the consequences of my decision. As for the plaintiffs: If you prevail, please send my share of the settlement back to Condé Nast, where it rightfully belongs.
Henry Smith is a student at the University of Chicago.