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Speaker 1: My name is Lily Madden and I'm a proud Arunda

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Speaker 1: Bungelung Calcuttin woman from Gadighl country. The Daily oz acknowledges

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Speaker 1: that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the

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Speaker 1: Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres

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Speaker 1: Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the

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Speaker 1: first peoples of these countries, both past and present.

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Speaker 2: Good morning and welcome to the Daily Os. It's Monday,

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Speaker 2: the thirtieth of January.

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Speaker 3: I'm Zara, I'm sam So.

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Speaker 2: Towards the end of last year, the Daily Os published

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Speaker 2: a poll and it was to look at unpaid internships

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Speaker 2: and the culture that exists around them. And the fascinating

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Speaker 2: finding was that almost three quarters of respondents said that

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Speaker 2: they felt exploited at some point during an internship.

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Speaker 4: Having to basically burn myself out if.

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Speaker 5: I wanted to be able to live while doing that

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Speaker 5: place for so.

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Speaker 2: I guess the big question is when does an internship

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Speaker 2: go from a good opportunity to genuine exploit uation. TDA

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Speaker 2: journalist Daniel Leserto has been investigating the issue and he's

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Speaker 2: going to answer those questions for us in the Deep

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Speaker 2: Dive but first the headlines.

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Speaker 3: The death of twenty nine year old Memphis man Tire

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Speaker 3: Nichols after a routine traffic stop has ignited protests across

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Speaker 3: the US, with curfews imposed in some states. Five police

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Speaker 3: officers have been charged with second degree murder, and the

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Speaker 3: Special Operations unit in which the officers were part has

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Speaker 3: been permanently disbanded. A video of the arrest and multiple

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Speaker 3: officers kicking, punching, and striking Nichols with a baton was

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Speaker 3: released by Memphis Police on Saturday.

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Speaker 2: Social media influencers giving misleading recommendations or endorsements to their

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Speaker 2: followers are now being formally investigated by Australia's consumer watchdog,

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Speaker 2: the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. The a Triple C

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Speaker 2: has begun a sweep to find misleading material, which includes

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Speaker 2: a public call out asking for posts from influencers that

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Speaker 2: may require investigation.

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Speaker 3: Australia's Foreign Minister Penny Wong has formally condemned an escalation

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Speaker 3: of violence in Israel, stating quote, Australia unequivocally condemns the

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Speaker 3: horrific terrorist attack that claims the lives of at least

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Speaker 3: seven worshipers in Jerusalem on Friday evening, adding that the

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Speaker 3: government is quote deeply concerned with escalating violence in Israel

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Speaker 3: and the Palestinian territories and called on all sides to exercise.

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Speaker 2: Restraint and for good news. Students at a high school

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Speaker 2: in Tennessee have built a fifteen year old classmate a

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Speaker 2: new robotic hand. The engineering class built the robotic hand

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Speaker 2: as part of an assignment, which now allows their classmate,

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Speaker 2: Sergio to use his right hand for the first time.

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Speaker 2: Sergio told CBS, I never expected it, never in a

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Speaker 2: million years.

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Speaker 5: Okay.

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Speaker 2: So we recently put a survey out about unpaid internships

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Speaker 2: and we had around five hundred respondents give us really

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Speaker 2: detailed information about this. Almost three quarters said they felt

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Speaker 2: exploited at some point during their internship. So when does

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Speaker 2: an internship go from a good opportunity to exploitation. Well,

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Speaker 2: I'm joined by TDA journalist Daniel Leserto. Daniel, welcome it

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Speaker 2: to your podcast debut. How are you feeling?

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Speaker 5: Thank you, Zara. It's such a privilege to be here

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Speaker 5: and I'm really excited to have this chat today.

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Speaker 2: As am I. And so before we get into the

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Speaker 2: details of what you found during this process, have you

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Speaker 2: ever done an unpaid internship.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, so, I actually have done a few unpaid internships,

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Speaker 5: and they were on the whole positive experiences. I was

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Speaker 5: treated very nicely and embraced by the respective businesses, but

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Speaker 5: I definitely had times where I felt not given the

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Speaker 5: same respect as say, an employee. So having that realization

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Speaker 5: in the internship, yes I am at the bottom of

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Speaker 5: the food chain, made me also realize how vulnerable that

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Speaker 5: any unpaid intern can be to exploitation.

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Speaker 2: Can we just have a quick chat about what an

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Speaker 2: intern actually is.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, So this whole story is focused on unpaid workers,

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Speaker 5: and that loosely the into two categories for the sake

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Speaker 5: of his story, That is unpaid interns and people on

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Speaker 5: vocational placement. Unpaid interns are people who go into a

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Speaker 5: workforce or industry with the intention to have fun and

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Speaker 5: learn some professional skills. Now this differs a little bit

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Speaker 5: to vocational placements, which may be, for example, a nursing

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Speaker 5: student going to a hospital for a six week program,

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Speaker 5: and with that comes some different legal bounds, but we'll

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Speaker 5: get into that a bit later.

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Speaker 2: Let's turn to the survey that you put out to

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Speaker 2: the TDA audience. What to you were the big takeaways.

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Speaker 5: So the two macro trends I want to share with

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Speaker 5: you from last November's survey is around the commonality of

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Speaker 5: unpaid internships in Australia and how often people feel like

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Speaker 5: they've been exploited while undertaking his internships. So we found

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Speaker 5: that sixty eight percent of our respondents had undertaken an

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Speaker 5: unpaid internship for more than two weeks, and of our

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Speaker 5: respondents seventy three percent so they felt taken advantage of

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Speaker 5: during this unpaid internship a similar amount, so they felt

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Speaker 5: like they were completing work that deserve financial compensation, and

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Speaker 5: about forty three percent said that during this period their

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Speaker 5: ability to pay for basic necessities was compromised.

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Speaker 2: OK, and I want to go into that a bit

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Speaker 2: more in a second, but I do just want to

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Speaker 2: acknowledge that obviously at TDA we are speaking to a

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Speaker 2: proportionately young audience and so.

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Speaker 5: Our results reflect that.

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Speaker 2: What do we know about I guess the research from

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Speaker 2: the wider cross section of the country. Does that align

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Speaker 2: with what we've had.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, So the short answer is we didn't have that

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Speaker 5: much data actually available on the prevalence of unpaid internships

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Speaker 5: in Australia and that's often because they're so informal. There's

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Speaker 5: really a contract or documentation involved in the internship, which

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Speaker 5: means that for a journalist like myself, it's very hard

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Speaker 5: to access any prior history or information which can inform

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Speaker 5: for study. Having said that, we did find a nationally

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Speaker 5: representative survey in twenty sixteen which found that about sixty

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Speaker 5: percent of Australians age between nineteen and twenty nine have

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Speaker 5: participated in at least one unpaid work experience in the

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Speaker 5: last five years, which tells us quite similarly to our

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Speaker 5: own that this is a pretty common experience among young Australians.

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Speaker 2: Okay, so you rattled off a bunch of numbers for

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Speaker 2: me there earlier, and I don't know if this is

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Speaker 2: just amazing that I sometimes find it hard to fully

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Speaker 2: grasp an idea when we're just talking in numbers. That

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Speaker 2: is the English side of my brain. But you also

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Speaker 2: asked people for more qualitative responses so to hear their

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Speaker 2: at the stories. And again we've all heard it from

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Speaker 2: our friends, but it was really something hearing from the audience,

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Speaker 2: wasn't it.

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Speaker 5: Definitely? And there's two main stories I don't want to

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Speaker 5: share with you. One who was an unpaid intern, and

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Speaker 5: the other who was on a vocational placement. The unpaid

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Speaker 5: intern i'm referring to. Her name is Nicola and she

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Speaker 5: was twenty when she started interning at a fashion magazine

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Speaker 5: in Newcastle on benew South Wales North coast. She worked

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Speaker 5: four day weeks, so four days, nine to five for

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Speaker 5: eight months without any pay, and for her it's created

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Speaker 5: a really awkward environment because she still had to survive.

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Speaker 5: She has still to make ends meet. And when she

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Speaker 5: left her internship early to pursue her paid job, she

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Speaker 5: was regularly confronted by managers who said this wasn't the

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Speaker 5: right way to approach the internship, or this wasn't a

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Speaker 5: great look for her, especially as a younger intern trying

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Speaker 5: to secure a job in the fashion industry. And she

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Speaker 5: told me that she eventually, after these eight months, had

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Speaker 5: to leave the industry to take a job, a paid

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Speaker 5: job at is elsewhere. And she told me that the

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Speaker 5: first night she received her paycheck from the new job,

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Speaker 5: she burst into tears, such was the emotion of actually

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Speaker 5: being paid for her labor. And I've spoken about nikolaide

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Speaker 5: but in actual fact, her experience was a pretty common

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Speaker 5: trend among the people we spoke to. We heard stories

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Speaker 5: of exploitation in the workforce as an intern. But also

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Speaker 5: what I found most concerning was the sort of attitudes

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Speaker 5: given to an intern. Often they would look down to

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Speaker 5: made them feel stupid because at the bottom of the

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Speaker 5: food chain, if you like. And this is an attitude

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Speaker 5: which for me is quite concerning, given that people coming

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Speaker 5: into these internships with good intentions, wanted to learn and

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Speaker 5: have a bit of fun, and in return they're being

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Speaker 5: treated quite poorly by workers at the business.

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Speaker 2: Daniel, you mentioned before that there was also a story

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Speaker 2: of a vocational placement.

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Speaker 5: What was that one? Yeah, So this is a story

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Speaker 5: from Sarah, who, as a nursing student, had to complete

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Speaker 5: eight hundred hours of placement to Corey as a nurse.

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Speaker 5: Before I go into her story, I wanted to make

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Speaker 5: it quite clear of it. This is a course requirement,

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Speaker 5: and people who study nursing know that this is a requirement.

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Speaker 5: But nonetheless, she told me of a really grueling and

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Speaker 5: at times to me unfair work schedule just to make

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Speaker 5: ends meet.

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Speaker 4: My last placement was six weeks long, So that's six

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Speaker 4: weeks of not being able to work or having to

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Speaker 4: basically kill myself and burn myself out if I wanted

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Speaker 4: to be able to live while doing that place for it.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, can you sort of just run me through what

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Speaker 5: look like for you?

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Speaker 4: So I was working two jobs while also completing this

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Speaker 4: placement at a full time level, so forty hours a

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Speaker 4: week and then a further basically forty plus hours a

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Speaker 4: week on top of that, just out of pay my rent.

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Speaker 4: I didn't have time to cook dinners, but I didn't

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Speaker 4: have the money to be able to actually buy my

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Speaker 4: dinner at the end of the day because I wasn't

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Speaker 4: earning enough. I was barely making ends meet with just

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Speaker 4: what I was working at time.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, and also said in your survey that you weren't

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Speaker 5: in time to the same level of support or care

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Speaker 5: as the employees at these hospitals. Can you sort of

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Speaker 5: just elaborate in a little bit like, did you was

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Speaker 5: there a certain point in the placemen you you sought

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Speaker 5: some extra care and if so, how did that play out? Yeah?

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Speaker 4: So I had a couple of like being a nursing

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Speaker 4: student and being on placement. Is everyone comes out orderline traumatized.

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Speaker 4: A lot of us are dealing with, you know, unruly patients, aggression,

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Speaker 4: sexual aggression. We've been I'm not the only one who

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Speaker 4: experienced this, but like physical touching from patients, inappropriate comments,

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Speaker 4: things like that, you know, you're seeing traumatic things in

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Speaker 4: that you're seeing patients passing away, You're seeing people on

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Speaker 4: their worst possible days, which isn't exactly easy for everyone

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Speaker 4: to deal with. And then on top of that, like

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Speaker 4: if you reach out for support, because you're not an employee,

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Speaker 4: you don't qualify for the free support that these hospitals

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Speaker 4: provide a lot of the time. So if you reach

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Speaker 4: out for, you know, support on these issues, you're paying

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Speaker 4: out of pocket because you're paying a private psychologist, for

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Speaker 4: private therapist or counseling, things like that. You're not getting

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Speaker 4: that support that you actually need unless you're then paying

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Speaker 4: at further cost, which you're not able to if you're

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Speaker 4: working a full time placement for free.

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Speaker 3: We're going to take a short break, will be right now.

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Speaker 2: Okay, So pretty clear the overwhelming sentiment from what you've

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Speaker 2: heard and what you've found is that there is still

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Speaker 2: this mistreatment that happens across the board. I'm curious to

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Speaker 2: understand what legal frameworks actually exist in this space.

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Speaker 5: So it's legal in Australia to do unpaid work provided

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Speaker 5: that you are a student or in a vocational placement,

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Speaker 5: or that isn't an employment relationship. If an intern is

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Speaker 5: doing work that is consistent with the work of an

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Speaker 5: employee rather than the intern, then they would be in

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Speaker 5: an employment relationship. An unpaid intern should be there to

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Speaker 5: learn and develop their professional skills. It isn't solely about

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Speaker 5: getting a job done or meeting a KPI or something

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Speaker 5: of that nature, because that's consistent with the work of

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Speaker 5: an employee.

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Speaker 2: As listeners who are probably in that stage of life

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Speaker 2: going through unpaid internships, I think it's good to know

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Speaker 2: what the law says. It does say something different about placements, though,

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Speaker 2: is that right?

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Speaker 5: So it has the same legal requirements as an unpaid internship. However,

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Speaker 5: vocational placements have more protections than an unpaid internship, So

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Speaker 5: to summarize the key additional protections are that a placement

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Speaker 5: must be organized by university or a taife and it

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Speaker 5: must be part of a student's course to graduate.

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Speaker 2: Some of what you've heard from people, including what we

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Speaker 2: heard of Sarah for me, raises the question not just

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Speaker 2: about I guess the legality of internships, but also how

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Speaker 2: safe they are? Are their protections for people you know?

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Speaker 2: Is their recourse if something does go wrong?

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Speaker 5: Yes, so this is quite a fast moving space at

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Speaker 5: the federal level. To go back one little bit, workers

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Speaker 5: and interns aren't classified the same way. So, as I

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Speaker 5: mentioned before about the employment relationships, if you're in an

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Speaker 5: employment relationship and you're an employee, you're entited with certain protections,

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Speaker 5: and they include protections around sexual harassment and sexual discrimination,

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Speaker 5: and they do not necessarily translate to interns. However, there

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Speaker 5: have been laws passed in the last two years which

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Speaker 5: provide more protections for unpaid workers, and these include protections

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Speaker 5: from sexual harassment and hostile work environments.

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Speaker 2: You spoke to some experts in this space too, Were

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Speaker 2: there any recommendation so, I guess tangible things about how

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Speaker 2: we could be improving things for unpaid workers.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, so I spoke the two key experts who interestingly

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Speaker 5: proposed two different schools of thought to solve this issue.

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Speaker 5: I spoke to ambarrister specializing in employment law, Vonn your bullet,

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Speaker 5: and she told me that she would like to see

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Speaker 5: new laws added to directly classify what an intern is

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Speaker 5: and provide clear protections that would both help the organization

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Speaker 5: and the intern On the other hand, though, I spoke

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Speaker 5: to an associate professor from the University of Adelaide and

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Speaker 5: Hewitt who actually fought, there's no need for new laws,

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Speaker 5: but we can broaden current laws around the worker category

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Speaker 5: to extend those protections that are already for workers and

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Speaker 5: put them on for interns as well. But obviously visa

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Speaker 5: just schools of forought at the moment, and there's been

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Speaker 5: no concrete action to actually put in these changes that

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Speaker 5: have been recommended by these two experts.

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Speaker 2: The thing that I kept thinking about while I was

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Speaker 2: reading your pieces, Daniel, is that it's so obviously become

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Speaker 2: an entrenched part of the career progression. And I can

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Speaker 2: only speak to the me your industry, but every day

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Speaker 2: we get requests from people asking to undertake unpaid internships

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Speaker 2: as if that's the only way that they could possibly

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Speaker 2: get in the door at the daily os. And so

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Speaker 2: I mean from an employer point of view, it's been

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Speaker 2: fascinating to see that that is the expectation that if

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Speaker 2: you're at university or straight out of university, you deserve

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Speaker 2: to not be paid for your work. And I guess

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Speaker 2: if anyone's listening that is not what we do here,

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Speaker 2: and I think this has been a really good learning

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Speaker 2: and a good exercise to understand what is available in

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Speaker 2: the legal space and what protections are as well.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, I think you're dead on in the sense that

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Speaker 5: for better or worse, and realistically for worse, it's become

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Speaker 5: somewhat of informal expectation within the graduate labor market. But

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Speaker 5: one thing that I would give as a point of

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Speaker 5: advice to any graduates or university students is just to

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Speaker 5: be if you're entering an internship, just be really clear

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Speaker 5: with the employer or business what your expectations are. I

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Speaker 5: feel that generally if you clearly communicate with the employer

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Speaker 5: what your expectations are as an intern in what work

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Speaker 5: you feel comfortable doing and not comfortable doing, then as

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Speaker 5: every change, you have a really good positive experience where

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Speaker 5: you learn skills and can put that into a pay job.

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Speaker 5: In saying all that, unsafe work places do exist and

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Speaker 5: inevitably will exist into the future, as an intern, there's

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Speaker 5: inevitably going to be these power and bounces between yourself

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Speaker 5: and the employer. So while setting healthy boundaries is important,

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Speaker 5: I think it's important to stay.

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Speaker 3: Vigilant Thank you for joining us on the Daily Ours

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Speaker 3: this morning. If you learn something from today's episode, don't

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Speaker 3: forget to hit subscribe so there's a TVA episode waiting

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Speaker 3: for you every morning. We'll be back again tomorrow. Until then,

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Speaker 3: have a great day.