And Now… Desperate People to Work for Free
July 20th, 2009Via: Reuters:
With U.S. unemployment at a 20-year high, some Americans are working for free while looking for a job, but experts are split over whether it is a sign of dedication or desperation.
Unpaid job seekers can keep their resumes fresh by boosting their experience and learning new skills, experts say, but others warn businesses may take advantage of the jobless and that it is illegal for commercial companies not to pay workers.
Dana Lin, 22, is one of the 14.7 million unemployed workers in the United States. She lost her marketing job at a technology company near San Francisco in April and since then has been working for free for about five hours a week for Internet company Jobnob.com.
“Every company has thousands of people applying for each job, and I realized I needed more appeal,” said Lin, a graduate of Cornell University. Since being laid off, she has applied unsuccessfully for about 50 jobs.
“In some cases companies might be getting the better end of it (by having unpaid workers),” she said. “But it’s nice to have something occupy yourself with and when speaking to prospective employers it’s nice to say ‘I haven’t just been sitting around all day, I’ve actually been doing something.'”
It’s not only the unemployed taking on free work. Some employed people are being asked by bosses to go without pay.
British Airways last month asked its British-based employees to volunteer for up to a month’s unpaid work. Some companies and U.S. state and city governments have made staff take unpaid furloughs, but some employees still work anyway to keep up or because they are worried about losing their job.
Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Washington D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute, warns that while people can volunteer time for non-profit groups and government, it is illegal for commercial companies to not pay workers.
“It’s not just a bad idea, it’s illegal,” Eisenbrey. “The law says (companies) may not suffer or permit employees to work for less than the minimum wage.
“The more desperate people get, they will do things like this to try and make themselves more appealing to an employer,” he said. “The short-term prospects for most of the unemployed are very bad. They aren’t going to be made much better by working off the books or working for nothing.”
Ah, so this is what it comes to. You couldn’t ask for a better illustration of the slave mentality of the American Hive Mind.
Decades of indoctrination, coupled with the abomination that is the “Protestant Work Ethic”, and you get an army of willing morons. We should thank out lucky starts that a “corn-pone Hitler” hasn’t yet come along to lead them.
How apt that this story is posted on the 40th anniversary of the Moon landing. Quite a fall in four short decades.
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” Goethe.
Illegal to have people working for free? What about all the unpaid internships?
Even slaves received food, clothing, and shelter.
Boy these people are really deluded if they think working for free has its benefits. I remember volunteering in an office at a non profit for two years to gain office experience. I then applied to various office jobs and the employers just dismissed my unpaid work as nothing. I soon learned that only full time paid work counted as real experience. Never again will I work for free to try and gain experience. I bought into that nonsense about volunteering to gain experience and it was a load of crap!
If these people think they are going to get hired on at these companies that they are working for free at they are sadly deluding themselves. If somebody can get something for free why would they all of a sudden want to start paying for it? These companies are just taking advantage of them. Employers are going to laugh at them when they see them working for nothing. In fact these people are undervaluing themselves. If you don’t value yourself who will and I agree with PeterofLoneTree at least slaves didn’t have to worry how they will pay for food, clothing and shelter. There are expenses that come with working and nobody can afford for too long to work for free. I see this has a short term trend because it will eventually dawn on these people that they can’t afford to work for nothing. The better option is to do free lance work or do odd jobs for cash.
They could even do work in exchange for a service or good that they need.
Everyone who wants unpaid work to be declared illegal implicitly accepts the concept of “paid work” itself.