Graduates face exploitation

Student leaders from a group representing higher education arts courses across the UK have called for legislation to regulate the practice of using unpaid internships as a route into the creative professions. The Arts Group, which represents the interests of 50,000 arts students, has accused the creative industries of “outright exploitation”. In its highly critical report, ‘Emerging Workers’, the group highlights the “astonishingly low worth” attributed to creative graduates and points out that “disturbingly… National Minimum Wage (NMW) and employment rights… seem alien [in the creative sector]”. It calls for employers to be compelled to contribute to interns’ travel expenses, and insists that no fixed hours of work or specific responsibilities should be required for unpaid work experience. The group is also demanding that all graduates undertaking placements of more than a month should be paid at least the NMW. It was supported in the preparation of its report by Skillset, Arts Council England, Creative & Cultural Skills, and Central Saint Martins’ Innovation Centre. Speaking to AP, Kit Friend, Chair of the Arts Group, said that “the mass exploitation of interns and unpaid workers in the creative industries… is beyond a joke. We cannot continue to defend these as an accessible route to employment, when the reality is that they place yet another barrier in the way of social mobility and ridicule many of the positive moves to widen access.” He accused business and Parliament of being “incapable of restricting or reasonably limiting unfair practice independently and persist[ing] in breaking even existing legislation”, and called for “new guidelines and action to curb their behaviour before it’s too late”. 

The Liberal Democrats have pledged to introduce a ‘Paid Internship’ which would pay a training allowance of £55 a week, at no cost to employers. This works out at less than £1.40 an hour – well below the NMW (up to £203 a week) or the National Apprentice Wage (£95 a week). It does not solve the problem of how interns could support themselves without financial assistance from parents or elsewhere.
The Arts Group’s demands coincide with the publication of another report, ‘Creative Graduates, Creative Futures’, which examines the career patterns of UK graduates in art, design and media. Prepared by the Institute of Employment Studies, the Council for Higher Education in Art and Design, the University of the Arts London and 25 other higher education institutions, and based on a survey of graduates from 2002 to 2004, the report reveals that creative graduates are facing fierce competition for fewer jobs. Forty percent undertake voluntary or unpaid work after graduating and a third experience a period of unemployment. The report also supports the assertions of The Arts Group, observing that “those from more advantaged backgrounds have more chance of gaining more relevant work experience (by working unpaid or undertaking internships) because their parents… support them”. It highlights the difficulty of finding work: “Jobs tended not to be advertised, and work was accessed via a combination of personal contacts, work experience, networking and speculative self-promotion.” When graduates do find jobs, they are often not paid enough to live on, and short-term contracts, temporary work and portfolio working are commonplace. Almost 80% of those who were employed at the time of the survey were only in part-time work, which is “very likely a reflection on… less stable working patterns as a result of fluctuations in supply and demand”. This suggests that the increase in creative courses is not matched by a willingness or ability to employ the resulting creative graduates, despite the creative industries growing faster than other sectors.