Odds are that if you’re reading this right now you might have been an unpaid intern at some point over the last few years. Interns, while usually gaining experience and knowledge, have been known to take on a brutal workload with zero compensation.…
Odds are that if you’re reading this right now you might have been an unpaid intern at some point over the last few years. Interns, while usually gaining experience and knowledge, have been known to take on a brutal workload with zero compensation. But one new politician on the block is saying no to the unpaid intern thing. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will pay her interns “at least” $15 an hour, according to a Dec. 4 tweet, so let’s start the slow clap for her.
In a Monday, Dec. 3 tweet, Ocasio-Cortez called out Congress for relying on unpaid interns, saying it’s “unjust for Congress to budget a living wage for ourselves, yet rely on unpaid interns.” Pay Our Interns — an advocacy group committed to increasing the amount of paid internships in the government, for-profit, and nonprofit sectors — conducted a 2017 study into congressional internships and found that only 8 percent of House Republicans and about 4 percent of House Democrats pay their interns.
