Caterpillar shows internships can be paid

August is time for some college students to check to see if their hoped-for fall internships are still there.

This August is also time to give credit where credit is due on internships – to Caterpillar, Inc.

This spring, Big Yellow hosted hundreds of summer interns from more than 100 colleges for a welcome to Big Yellow at the corporation’s Edwards facility.

Plus, although it may seem to be common sense, Cat is uncommon for PAYING its interns. (About half of all internships are unpaid, according to the Associated Press.)

A Fortune 500 company, Caterpillar should be praised for rising above the ranks of corporate America by paying its interns about $27 an hour, according to the employment search site indeed.com

Internships can be important, a bridge from school work to work-work. At their best, they offer real-life experiences that expand knowledge from classrooms to more tangible applications and marketable skills, plus the start of professional networking (with peers as well as supervisors).

However, internships can also exploit students and be less educational than free help for cheap employers.

“Students who take part in paid internships receive more job offers and garner higher starting salaries than those who participate in unpaid internships,” reports the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), whose most recent survey found that paid interns averaged 1.4 job offers, while unpaid interns averaged 0.9 offers.

Unfortunately, unpaid internships are too often the norm, especially in government, professional sports and non-profit organizations as well as media employers.

“Unpaid internships are a barrier to achieving equity and opportunity for all college students,” said NACE executive director Shawn VanDerziel.

When I was a reporter and NewsGuild union officer at the Peoria Journal Star, there were newsroom interns, but they were paid. It was in our union contract. But when I taught journalism at Western Illinois University, I helped students get internships – and I felt terrible that virtually no newspaper in downstate Illinois paid student interns – who themselves paid tuition and fees for the experience and credit hours.

In the building trades, a parallel to internships is apprenticeships, but virtually all of those union-contractor joint programs compensate their trainees.

For other occupations, prospective interns face a situation almost like indentured servitude, except without the promise of the old “freedom dues” that provided tools, provisions and even land to help indentured servants start independent, self-sufficient working lives afterward.

Darren Walker of the Ford Foundation calls an unpaid internship economy an insidious piece of an “American internship-industrial complex.”

In the book “Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy,” author Ross Perlin’s writes that American employers’ increasing reliance on unpaid and low-paid interns is morally bankrupt and illegal.

Indeed, the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) has specific criteria for legitimate internships. They must provide training tied to the intern’s formal education, and complement –not replace – the work of paid employees, for example.

Independent groups such as the nonpartisan “Fair Pay Campaign,” organized in 2012, for years have advocated for at least complying with existing statutes.

“We see Democrats talking about a ‘living’ wage while not paying their interns,” said the group’s founder Carlos Vera. “Republicans haven’t made labor a center point of their agenda, yet they in fact pay their interns at a higher rate than Democrats do. Frankly, it’s time for Democrats to practice what they preach.”

Politically, NACE has called for federal action: “We advocate for legislation to eliminate unpaid internships and provide support for employers in converting unpaid internships to paid internships.”

Legally, courts have ruled against some employers for violating the FLSA, including Fox Searchlight Pictures. Others facing lawsuit have included Conde Nast magazines, the Charlie Rose TV show, and the Hearst Corp.

Adam Klein, the plaintiff’s lawyer against Hearst and its magazine Harper’s Bazaar, said, “The practice of classifying employees as interns to avoid paying wages runs afoul of federal and state wage and hour laws.”

Elsewhere, a few colleges, such as Wake Forst, have tried to fill the compensation gap by providing modest stipends to help students cover some of their costs while they work for free.

And some unions are organizing directly. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has a program, Committee of Interns and Residents (CIR), which this year has already won six National Labor Relations Board elections not only unionizing hospitals, but workplaces like Whole Foods Market and a warehouse.

It’s past time to reject the backyard dare “Don’t be yellow” and instead challenge cheap or cheating employers is to mimic Big Yellow: Pay interns.