Andrew Langille is a Toronto-based lawyer specializing in labour law, particularly as it pertains to youth. He is the founder of Youth and Work, a website that aims to educate young Canadians about their workplace rights and to eliminate precarious employment situations. The Varsity sat down with Langille to discuss the status of unpaid internships and the realities of unpaid employment.
The Varsity: What is the legal status of unpaid internships in Ontario?
Andrew Langille: The legal status is pretty much unchanged. For non-academic internships, the criteria are quite difficult to cheat. Typically, you can’t have an unpaid internship outside of an academic setting. There’s a six-part test under subsection I.2 of the Employment Standards Act [ESA]. For academic internships, you can still do them if the unpaid internship is part of an academic program, so it has to be a part of the course calendar. There’s a professional exclusion for architecture, medical [and] psychology students. That’s listed under the Ontario Regulation 285/01. Outside of an academic context, you really can’t have an unpaid internship.
TV: You mentioned that unpaid interns don’t have the same rights as paid employees. Are they not entitled to things like health insurance? What kind of benefits are they entitled to?
AL: The thing about internships is that they can run the gamut, and it’s really only a term. It doesn’t have any legal definition, it doesn’t really have an agreed upon definition within education or human resources. Essentially, it’s some sort of training program and you have to go very broad to get some sort of definition that works. So, in terms of legal rights, all interns and all students are going to be covered under the Human Rights Code. In all circumstances, they have protection: the right to be safe from discrimination, free from harassment; they have those rights. For example, if students are doing an internship as part of an academic program, they’ll be covered under the workers’ compensation code [WCC] and the [Workplace Safety and Insurance Act], so they’ll get workers’ compensation. But if they’re doing the internship voluntarily… Let’s say if you went and did an internship at a community paper and weren’t going to be paid for it, you wouldn’t be covered under the WCC. So, if it’s voluntary, and voluntary internships are on the increase — students just aren’t covered.
TV: Do you think unpaid internships should exist at all?
AL: Outside of school, they really shouldn’t exist. With the present lack of oversight that colleges and universities are giving, I have serious questions as to whether they should exist even in academic settings. Protection doesn’t exist yet that adequately protects young people, and young workers are at risk because they have less ability to assert their rights and they have less knowledge of their rights. That puts them in a vulnerable position. This vulnerability has been recognized by the court, recognized by the Ministry of Labour, by academics, so why we haven’t had more action is problematic.
TV: How do employers get away with employing unpaid interns outside of academia?
AL: It’s the classic catch-22. You need to have experience to get the job. Unpaid internships are a very easy way to do that. It also connects back to the idea that in Canada — North America as well — employers have basically washed their hands of employee training and now we have a situation where post-secondary institutions are fulfilling the training requirements for the private sector — and for the public sector for that matter. Workplace training just doesn’t happen the way it should, and so we have all these mickey mouse degrees, like, you know, a bachelor of journalism, or a bachelor of education, whereas 50 years ago, you’d do a year of teachers’ college, or you wouldn’t go to university at all and become a journalist. Now you have to go and do five years of education. The skills haven’t changed that dramatically. You can make an argument about web-based skills and how you need that for journalism, but that’s mainly technical stuff. The idea of teaching or telling a story, the principles haven’t changed really, but you have this vast increase in the amount of education that you have, and this credentialism that people graduate to get jobs. I think employers can get away with it because people are so desperate for jobs.
TV: What are your principle concerns with unpaid internships?
AL: I’m not so concerned about the paid or unpaid on the academic internships; I’m much more concerned about whether the proper protections are in place, because I don’t think these things are going away anytime soon, but students just don’t have adequate protection.
TV: Are you not concerned that people are working without being paid at all?
AL: Well, you have to start somewhere. In my mind – this is being a lawyer – yes, the issue of people being paid is incredibly important and obviously I’m not saying that’s not an issue because it is, but when I go and rank what’s more important, it’s the [Occupational Health and Safety Act] and workers’ compensation stuff that’s going to protect the physical and mental wellbeing of a person.
TV: What do you think students need to know when considering doing an unpaid internship?
AL: They should talk to their parents. They should talk to the staff of their department and if it’s not an academic internship, they probably shouldn’t do it, because it puts them at too much risk in many cases. The most critical thing is to know the law, how you’re protected in Ontario and what the rules are. Nobody is questioning the value of internships — neither myself nor any of the groups I work with question that — but the thing is, if you’re doing work, you should be getting paid for it. Unpaid internships have become synonymous with free labour.
TV: What do you think of political efforts that address larger structural issues that affect youth labour?
AL: We need to see a lot more attention from the part of the government to issues of youth unemployment. Certainly, we need more active labour programs, and better public policy when it comes to addressing some of the structural issues that young people face in the labour market, such as unemployment [and] unpaid internships. Beyond that, I think there needs to be more attention paid to broader issues of an intergenerational equity: issues like the cost of housing the cost of living, childcare, being able to access affordable transit — a whole range of issues. I don’t think our society is doing a good job of addressing the needs of young people.
TV: I get the impression that not all young people know themselves that it’s necessarily a problem or that they can do anything. What can they do?
AL: You can join political organizations; speak out about it. Some groups are starting to form around these issues, but young people have to get active — that’s the only way that change happens. Three years ago, nobody was talking about the unpaid internship issue and now it’s quite a serious policy issue.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
