#29 Unpaid workers

For a start getting, into a top job nowadays often means working for nothing.

I’m actually living in my parents flat. Luckily for, me my parents are somewhat older, and my father’s semi-retired, so they spend most of their time in the country, and i get the run of the flat, which is very nice.

Antonia’s daily commute is a three-mile trip from Chelsea to SoHo in London. She works as an unpaid intern of Modis, a top pr company for the fashion industry. 70 people work here, up to 20 of them are interns. They usually work for three months and most are unpaid. Right now, they’re preparing for London fashion week. Antonia has a master’s degree in English but to make it in fashion you have to start at the bottom.

You have to be known by the companies to get a job. And I know that I can’t just leap straight into a job and actually this is very good for me.

The interns do most of the basic work.

Every little girl dreams of being in fashion but you get into it and you realize that there’s so much more behind the scenes. You know, cleaning the floor and cleaning up after events. It’s sort of a nothing position. You need help in every way, whether its financial, or sort of moral, just to get through it.

Sarah worked as an intern for fifteen months. She was lucky, for most of it she was paid and at the end of it she got a job.

It’s almost is a prerequisite for any professional position that you want, so if you can get in with a company like Modis, and work your way up there, you’re golden.

Sarah got her job before the recession hit. Since then the competition’s got even stiffer.

There are so many applications coming in every day. So many people that are so forthcoming and working for free. You sort of have to look at that and say, well, you know, do we want to throw money at them if they’re willing to do the job anyway. And I think the answer is no.

It’s 8:00 a.m. on a damp Wednesday morning. It’s London Fashion Week and Modis are working on one of the biggest shows. And they’re here in force, including half a dozen of their interns.

I just go briefly through duties. On the main front door, it’s Tyler and Fiona. On the interior door is Harriet and Antonia.

In ten minutes, the show’s on. That’s the most important thing so all the work building up to it has to be precision, it has to be right, to be the right people, in the right place, at the right time.

Morning everyone. Bright and breezy. You’ll be okay guys, it’s a really lovely sunny morning show.

The boss has arrived to oversee the operation. He believes internships offer newcomers a chance to get a foot in the door at one of the most competitive jobs in the business. Within the fashion industry generally, the intern is a, you know, is a really vital resource. We need we just need we need so many people. And do the interns work, do proper work when they’re here? Absolutely. Yeah, they really do. And what we really try and do is then is also get them to have a variety of experience, as well. If 15, more than 15, maybe 20 of your 70 staff, yeah, are working here for free, I presume it’s quite key to the way you’re profitable, as well. Is it? Do you mean in sense that are we more profitable because we’ve got free staff? ‘Cause, as you just said, they’re doing proper jobs, yeah, and they’re doing them for free. Well I mean I think when I say they’re doing proper jobs, I mean, they’re doing support jobs to the team. But they are things that need doing, yeah, yeah. So, does that help your company remain profitable? I think, I think that, um, I think that it’s, you know, how do I, how would I answer that… I’ve never really thought, I’ve never really thought of it like that.

The interns at Modis get experience across different departments, but they can expect to work hard.

I was up to at five o’clock. I came in to work on the bus. I was here at about quarter past seven putting out press releases, making sure that the seating was correct, making sure everyone knew what their jobs they are doing, and now, it’s my job to stand at the interior door and make sure everyone knows where they’re sitting.

Really this is an opportunity for me to make contacts, to get in touch with the right people, to find another job. If you’re prepared to put in the hard work, it pays off, eventually.

Celebrities and excitement. Life as an intern in PR, can be a glamorous business. But working for free is a luxury not everyone can afford.

Doesn’t it depend on privilege, and access to wealth, and access to free accommodation, to be able to work for free for three months? Most people can’t do that. I do you worry sometimes that it does favour the slightly better off. Although, we’ve had, you know, we’ve had it, again, we’ve had a few interns who are then, you know, working evenings, and doing sort of bar jobs to really supplement, or work, to give them an income.

The problem is one internship is seldom enough to secure a career. Of around 50 interns through work at Modis each year, only a handful get jobs there.

I wouldn’t mind if I had to do three or four three-month internships in a similar situation. If it got me the job of my dreams, at the end, I would do it.

It helps if you live in the southeast. Almost two-thirds of Britain’s top companies are now based in London.

Internships now are the currency by which individuals can get into these prestigious jobs in the in the professions that are running our country. And the way that you get those is by being able to work unpaid. Usually work in London, not have your travel costs reimbursed.

It’s not just PR. My own profession, journalism, is getting harder to join. It used to be a job you could do straight from school. Now you mostly need a degree and more journalism jobs than ever are in London. Girish Gupta from Wiltshire has a degree in physics from Manchester university, but set his sights on becoming a journalist. He did four separate internships. Three at national dailies, one with the top news agency. All unpaid. All in London.

I stayed in hostels like this one for 16 quid a night. I stayed in random people’s houses on gumtree. Which obviously cost a fair bit as well. Very roughly, I mean, it would have cost over a couple of grand in all these placements for accommodation. Not including even food, to be honest.

He paid for it by doing a master’s degree in physics, then used his student loan to fund his internships in the holidays.

First it’s the excitement of it all. So, you’re not too worried about the money because that will come in the future, so just seeing, you know, your first page leads, your first byline in national paper, that’s a massive deal. So after a while of getting all these bylines, I started to realize that, actually, it was the newspapers that were making money out of me, and making money up my work, and not paying for it.

In all, the papers he worked for published 32 of Garrosh’s articles. By the time of his last internship at the Independent, he was losing patience.

I worked at the independent earlier this year. And in my time there, I had about six articles published. And what I came to realize was that I was doing exactly the same job as the guy next to me and he was obviously to getting paid for it.

Garrosh decided to take it up with the paper. He wrote asking to be paid a minimum wage for his shifts.

I got phone call from some very high-ranking, basically, screaming at me and telling me that I had no right to do that, and had no right to voice that opinion. I did try and I offered to argue my case, and he just wasn’t up for it. And he eventually put the phone down on me.

The independent told us that work experience is a useful way of getting your foot in the door, and in the past people have got jobs off the back of it. They say in Garrosh’s case that he was warned in advance that his work placement would be for just two weeks, and that it will be unpaid. In the end Garrosh ran out of money. For him not living in London was too big a barrier.

If getting a job involves working for free for months in Britain’s costliest city it is clearly not open to all.