Should Obama socialize the American internship?

The New York Times ran an article on July 2nd, written by Hilary Stout, about the "coveted and elusive summer internship". The article really got me.

I was fortunate enough to land an internship for A Pea in the Pod, a maternity wear line owned by Destination Maternity Corporation in 2009. I was laid off five months later. I received the typical email from HR, with some kind of vague message. I was given the run around for days because the HR employee was ironically pregnant at the time, and then I was given the axe. Lucky for me, I could receive unemployment; less than $300 a week. As I sat in my studio apartment watching basic cable and eating snacks I bought with my food stamp card, I asked myself, why? Why would a company lay off a $10 an hour employee with a college degree who was turning out good work? One word, Obama. I truly had no idea until I came upon this article that the man I voted for, was the reason I was watching Maury Povich in my tiny ass apartment. Legislation that he had passed actually took away many internship opportunities.

The U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division recently addressed the concerns many have about the abuse of interns. Interns often complete tasks that regular employees are responsible for but are not compensated appropriately. Many apply for internships only to find they aren't really learning, simply filling up their resumes. Other students cannot afford to work for free and are less likely to land a job because they had to forego the internship experience.

The Labor Wage and Hour Division wants to even the playing field and make sure everyone is being treated fairly. They made more restrictions and clearer guidelines on what an internship is and when it is legal to hire someone for an unpaid position. According to the department's website, www.dol.gov, "the more an internship is structured around a classroom or academic experience as opposed to the employer's actual operations, the more likely the internship will be reviewed as an extension of the individual's educational experience...". The rest of the paragraph goes on to explain if the work an intern does is directly helping the company make a profit, they are to receive minimum wage and overtime pay.

I received $10 an hour at my design internship. I worked a 40 hour week with the exception of unpaid holidays off and made a barely okay living. What I didn't consider was the possibility I could get stuck in this position, with no contract and end up being a full time employee with no benefits indefinitely. This includes no raise. I was eager for the learning experience, hoping it would lead to a promotion and was grateful for the job in these tough times.

The Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division website states, "an internship should be for a fixed duration and not a trial period for an actual employee. I think we should insert: Amanda loses job, here. I often worked unsupervised for hours at a time and filled in for design assistants when they were on vacation. I couldn't handle their entire workload but I handled a lot of it and had other designers sign off on important decisions. This is also considered in the new rules. If an intern is not given a certain amount of supervision and the educational needs of the intern are not consistently addressed, then it is the company's responsibility to compensate.

I'm sure Obama meant well, although his efforts could have been spent on gay rights, for example, but we still have a problem. These new laws force the standard internship model into two different distinct categories; the unpaid, completely educational experience, which came to mean at my job, doing an internship for school credit, or the other option: a kind of mini-employee that works independently and has a higher expected level of competency but only for a finite period of time. It seems like the paid option would of course be the most desirable, but I worry about the lack of attention this intern would receive. On the other hand, you may have a contrived version of a work experience, where you don't do a lot of hands on work, to prevent the company from having to compensate you.

What is the solution to this problem? Should Obama socialize the American internship, make a timeline for the job and have a very specific contract? Or, should students fight tooth and nail to secure one of these jobs and have a real taste of capitalism?