{"id":8549,"date":"2016-06-01T14:51:10","date_gmt":"2016-06-01T04:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.thomsonreuters.com.au\/journals\/?p=8549"},"modified":"2024-07-10T07:58:02","modified_gmt":"2024-07-10T07:58:02","slug":"would-you-work-for-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.thomsonreuters.com.au\/journals\/2016\/06\/01\/would-you-work-for-free\/","title":{"rendered":"Would you work for free?"},"content":{"rendered":"

You may have to if you are a young law student\/graduate trying to get your foot in the legal industry door in today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153buyer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s market\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for law jobs \u00e2\u20ac\u201c though buying<\/em> may be moot!<\/p>\n

With a 9% plus yearly increase in law graduates entering the legal jobs market \u00e2\u20ac\u201c nearly 15,000 in 2014 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c competition for scarce positions means many are compelled to accept unpaid work. Seen in the context of government-sponsored schemes \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Work for the Dole, National Work Experience Program, Youth Jobs PaTH \u00e2\u20ac\u201c it is part of a growing trend of employers using free or subsidised labour, particularly of young people.<\/p>\n

The attraction for legal employers to use unpaid labour is clear, it keeps costs down. But it is more problematic for law students\/graduates. In an article on unpaid law internships in the latest issue of Workplace Review<\/a><\/em> (Summer 2016, Vol 7 No 1<\/a>), Nandan Subramaniam, articulated the concern: exploitation.<\/p>\n

Citing reports from the Fair Work Ombudsman and others, Nandan said \u00e2\u20ac\u0153unending hours of unremunerated work\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is a source of stress and financial hardship for many legal interns. He argues that unpaid law internships fall within a legal \u00e2\u20ac\u0153grey area\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c between Fair Work Act 2009<\/em> (Cth) regulated \u00e2\u20ac\u0153vocational placements\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and\u00c2\u00a0 employment.<\/p>\n

Nandan acknowledges that unpaid work can have benefits for young lawyers and says it should not be abolished. He calls for law reform to improve the operation of the internship system, including amending the Fair Work Act<\/em> to provide clear parameters for unpaid work, and requiring mandatory documentation be filed with an appropriate authority specifying the nature of the work to be performed and the duration of the unpaid internship to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153deter firms from exploiting law students\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.<\/p>\n

We may ponder the possible implications should the problem of unregulated unpaid internships not be addressed, including, downwards pressure on pay generally and diminished industrial organizational capacity to challenge exploitative practices.<\/p>\n

Workplace Review<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0articles are available on request by\u00c2\u00a0completing the\u00c2\u00a0Individual Article Sale<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0order form\u00c2\u00a0and emailing it to\u00c2\u00a0tlranz.journal.orders@thomsonreuters.com<\/a>, or click\u00c2\u00a0here<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0for more information on how to\u00c2\u00a0subscribe to or purchase our journals content.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You may have to if you are a young law student\/graduate trying to get your foot in the legal industry door in today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153buyer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s market\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for law jobs \u00e2\u20ac\u201c though buying may be moot! With a 9% plus yearly increase in law graduates entering the legal jobs market \u00e2\u20ac\u201c nearly 15,000 in 2014 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c competition […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,161],"tags":[8104,847,8105,8106,3765,7443,8107,8108,8109],"class_list":["post-8549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journals","category-workplace-review","tag-exploitation","tag-fair-work-act-2009-cth","tag-fair-work-ombudsman","tag-internships","tag-law-graduates","tag-nandan-subramaniam","tag-unpaid-law-internships","tag-vocational-placements","tag-youth-jobs-path"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.thomsonreuters.com.au\/journals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.thomsonreuters.com.au\/journals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.thomsonreuters.com.au\/journals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.thomsonreuters.com.au\/journals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.thomsonreuters.com.au\/journals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.thomsonreuters.com.au\/journals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8549\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.thomsonreuters.com.au\/journals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.thomsonreuters.com.au\/journals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.thomsonreuters.com.au\/journals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}