Saturday, March 26, 2011

A really sickening headline

This one:

Unpaid jobs: The new normal?

It was picked up over at Democratic Underground right here.

In my humble opinion, it's exploitation - pure and simple.
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2 comments:

  1. Classof653:42 PM

    IMHO you're wrong. Yes, the company gets unpaid help, but the motivated "employee" gets so much more.

    I once thought of opening a book store, but had no experience in that field whatsoever and so I thought seriously about volunteering to work for nothing for a book store to "learn the ropes" before I committed myself and my savings to an enterprise I knew nothing about. I could understand someone doing the same thing in other fields.

    I've known several people who took temp work for practically no pay just to get their foot in the door of the business and to build a network within the company so that when a paid position was available, they would be considered for that position and already have an advantage in the hiring process.

    On the other hand, businesses could just offer unpaid positions with no intention of ever hiring the people permanently -- it's a chance you take... however, the experience and the updating of your resume would still be a positive step.

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  2. Ellie Finlay4:00 PM

    Hi, Classof65. Actually, I do see your point and I, myself, have done a huge amount of unpaid work - some of it for the very reasons you enumerate and some of it simply pro bono.

    I guess what I picked up from the article cited here was a kind of callousness that disturbed me. It really did seem to be about companies trying to move as close to employing slave labor as possible.

    It is a rather complex issue, isn't it?

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