Every year, at least half a million Americans work as interns. They famously shuttle coffee in a thousand newsrooms, congressional offices,and Hollywood studios, but they also deliver aid in Afghanistan, build the human genome, and pick up garbage. They are increasingly of all ages, and their numbers are growing fast-from 17 percent of college graduates in 1992 to 50 percent in 2008. Almost half of all internships are illegal under the Fair Labor Standards Act, and this mass exploitation saves firms more than $600 million each year. Interns enjoy no workplace protections and no standing in courts of law-let alone benefits like healthcare. Here is the first expose of the world of internships, by a brilliant young writer. A graduate of Stanford, SOAS, and Cambridge, Ross Perlin speaks eight languages. He is also a self-confessed serial internshipA" survivor who has held internships on three continents. In this witty, astonishing, and serious investigative work, Perlin takes the reader inside both boutique nonprofits and megacorporations like Disney (which employs 8,000 interns at Disney World alone). He profiles fellow interns, talks to historians about what unleashed this phenomenon, and explains why six states and several European countries are debating legislation meant to rein in the intern boom.
Intern Nation
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle. Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||
Book Description
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Product Description
Review
"Interns built the pyramids," the great magazine The Baffler once declared. And that was just the beginning of their labours, as Ross Perlin demonstrates in this fascination and long overdue expose of the wage labour without wages, the CV-building servitude, at the heart of contemporary capitalism." - Benjamin Kunkel, a founding editor of n+1 and author of the novel Indecision "Cloaked in the innocent idea of the intern, aggressive employers are using young people trying to get a foothold to weaken the leverage of existing workers, especially professionals. Ross Perlin gives us an account of another subterranean strategy to undermine working people." - Frances Fox Piven, Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the Graduate Center, CUNY "Alas, the valuable internship institution is being widely and flagrantly abused, as Ross Perlin demonstrates in this eye-opening book. A huge chunk of the workplace has been distorted in an unhealthy way, and Perlin provides not only the diagnosis but the beginnings of a prescription." - James Ledbetter, editor in charge of Reuters.com, and author of Unwarranted Influence "The world has been waiting for this book. It's lucky that someone as thoughtful and politically aware as Ross Perlin was there to write it." - Anya Kamenetz, author of Generation Debt and DIY U.
About the Author
Ross Perlin is a graduate of Stanford, SOAS, and Cambridge, and has written for Time magazine, Lapham's Quarterly, Guardian, Daily Mail and Open Democracy. He is researching disappearing languages in China.
Customer Reviews
There are no customer reviews yet on Amazon.ca
5 star
4 star
3 star
2 star
1 star
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3.9 out of 5 stars
15 reviews
25 of 27 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
First rate white-collar muckraking
April 23 2011
By curmudgeon84
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover
Few college graduates kvetch about their unpaid internships these days; they're considered a given, on par with clunky freshman-year prerequisites like introductory composition or math. But as Ross Perlin points out in his excellent, wonderfully-researched book "Intern Nation," companies of all stripes have cashed in on this unquestioning attitude to a) substitute deserving paid workers with scores of interns, particularly in downturns; b) assign highly-qualified interns to menial jobs without any compensatory training; and c) make a quick buck in the process by tying-up with universities who offer internships for college credit.
None of this sounds particularly alarming until one starts tallying up the social consequences. For one, unpaid (and even paid) internships automatically disenfranchise tons of talented poor kids whose parents can't pony up the cash to support them (no wonder that hard-to-break-into industries like publishing and film remain the playground of trustfunders). Since interns aren't regular employees, companies needn't provide them with healthcare; interns can't even successfully sue for sexual harrassment in the workplace. Finally -- and this was the most shocking revelation for me in Perlin's book -- unpaid internships are illegal. They violate a host of labor laws. The government simply looks the other way.
Ross Perlin's "Intern Nation" is a spectacular piece of white collar muck-raking. Written in a fluid prose style that communicates a cool rage, and buttressed by hundreds of tiny stories and anecdotes, it ought to help undo some of the psychic damage being wreaked on unprotected workers by companies the world over.
None of this sounds particularly alarming until one starts tallying up the social consequences. For one, unpaid (and even paid) internships automatically disenfranchise tons of talented poor kids whose parents can't pony up the cash to support them (no wonder that hard-to-break-into industries like publishing and film remain the playground of trustfunders). Since interns aren't regular employees, companies needn't provide them with healthcare; interns can't even successfully sue for sexual harrassment in the workplace. Finally -- and this was the most shocking revelation for me in Perlin's book -- unpaid internships are illegal. They violate a host of labor laws. The government simply looks the other way.
Ross Perlin's "Intern Nation" is a spectacular piece of white collar muck-raking. Written in a fluid prose style that communicates a cool rage, and buttressed by hundreds of tiny stories and anecdotes, it ought to help undo some of the psychic damage being wreaked on unprotected workers by companies the world over.
22 of 24 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Setting the record straight
May 9 2011
By gdw
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover
I have to say, LadyLaw clearly didn't read the book very carefully. Perlin points to more than one example of positive traineeship programs and also offers the story of "Tina" (page 138) who interned at ExxonMobil as an engineer. Just to quote the end of the story, "[Tina] 'found [herself] creating electronic tools which could be used to better-understand the refinery systems under consideration.' Not bad for a summer's work." In fact, Perlin's research is scrupulous and fair-minded; and his historical, legal, ethical, economic, and personal considerations of the internship system are brilliant and understandable. In contrast to LadyLaw's harangue, Perlin offers constructive criticisms and positive examples that can be used to improve our workplaces and society. Intern Nation is a totally noble effort and a great read.
13 of 16 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thought Provoking!
May 2 2011
By Mlinda
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover
An intelligent and easily readable book addressing an extremely challenging topic to get one's arms around! Working with available research as well as extensive interviewing across the range of players involved, the author has provided the means for students and their parents, college placement organizations, corporations, governments and not-for-profits to hopefully rethink the love affair that now exists for internships-especially unpaid ones-as the way in the door to a career. Thank you, Ross Perlin!
›
Go to Amazon.com to see all 15 reviews
3.9 out of 5 stars
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Business & Investing > Economics > Labour & Industrial Relations
- Books > Business & Investing > Economics > Unemployment
- Books > Law > Current Affairs
- Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics > Labour & Industrial Relations
- Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Sociology > Urban
- Books > Professional & Technical > Accounting & Finance > Economics > Labour & Industrial Relations
- Books > Professional & Technical > Accounting & Finance > Economics > Unemployment
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
