SIPTU condemns use of unpaid interns as “gross exploitation”
10-year-long scheme sees German students work up to “12 hours every day”
Prof. Moray McGowan, Head of Department, responds
Catherine Healy
News Editor
The Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union (SIPTU) has condemned as “gross exploitation” the use of unpaid interns by third-level institutions in Ireland.
The comment follows revelations surrounding the responsibilities of unpaid German interns at the Department of Germanic Studies at Trinity College, Dublin.
Speaking to Trinity News, Louise O’Reilly, SIPTU Education Sector organiser, said, “We’re not against internships. They’re often a valuable learning experience, but when you’re doing work that would ordinarily be paid, and replacing paid work, that’s unacceptable.”
She made the statement in relation to information acquired by this paper about the working conditions of German students who are recruited each year to teach at the Department.
Having interviewed a number of former interns, none of whom wish to be named, Trinity News has learned that unpaid German students teach a significant number of the compulsory language classes taken weekly by Junior and Senior Freshman students in the Department. These classes are all largely taught independently by unpaid interns, and have sometimes involved them correcting students’ homework.
Interns also take weekly tutorial groups for a module in cultural studies, and have covered for absent lecturers on a number of occasions in the past.
The internship programme in question has been in operation for ten years, and is advertised online by the Department. However, the Department’s webpage specifies that the conversation lessons taught by interns are done so “unter Anleitung” (under guidance).
In a statement to Trinity News, Professor Moray McGowan, head of the Department of Germanic Studies, said, “Interns teach conversation classes in spoken German which are a supplement to the structured instruction in German language provided by more senior and qualified staff. They are supervised in this by the staff who teach the language classes.”
However, the first former intern who spoke to this reporter about her experience at the Department, while stressing that the group had supervisors who “always found the time to discuss our teaching experience and also sat in on some of our classes”, said they “relied on us to prepare and perform the teaching independently”.
Professor McGowan’s claim is also at odds with comments provided by current students at the Department of Germanic Studies.
“Speaking to Trinity News, Louise O’Reilly, SIPTU Education Sector organiser, said, “We’re not against internships. They’re often a valuable learning experience, but when you’re doing work that would ordinarily be paid, and replacing paid work, that’s unacceptable.”
Speaking to this reporter, a Senior Sophister European Studies student recounted his experience of German language classes in first and second year in less than complimentary terms. He said, “Our classes were taken every week by people who were essentially teaching their peers. I didn’t learn a lot from them. They were chaotic and not very challenging. I don’t think they really knew what they were supposed to be doing.” When asked to describe the profile of language teachers he encountered teaching these language classes, he claimed that, “Most of them would’ve been about twenty-two or twenty-three.”
Another final year student, who took oral German as part of his TSM degree with the Department in Junior and Senior Freshman years, told Trinity News, “From what I remember of them, they were very, very informal. To be honest, I stopped going during second year, as I didn’t really feel they were worth the time… The impression I got was that [the tutors] were young, native speakers, possibly doing a postgrad in Trinity, and doing this on the side to earn some money. They just ran through some very basic exercises with us in class that were more akin to material you’d cover when learning a language in secondary school.”
The interns taken on every year, according to Professor McGowan, are either students of German or of English studying for a Master’s degree, or teachers of German as a foreign language. They are not interviewed by the Department, and are instead selected on the merits of a CV to work for periods of one term up to an entire academic year in college.
In addition to language classes, interns at the Department of Germanic Studies are regularly tasked with organising extracurricular activities, such as film screenings, and “Stammtisch” nights, the informal pub gatherings which are a tradition of the Department. During the Christmas period, interns often bake with students.
“For the entire time during which they worked, unpaid interns received no assistance from the Department with either accommodation or transport costs. Instead, they are expected to apply for funding or an Erasmus grant from their home university or the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). One former intern who received financial assistance through the Erasmus exchange programme said it “barely covered [his] rent”.
One of the most significant responsibilities entrusted to unpaid interns took place in 2011, when they ran the theatre group, which is a key component of first year and involves weekly practice sessions, largely without any assistance from the Department.
The lecturer whose role it was to lead the class, according to an intern who worked in Trinity College for one term that year, was on sick leave for over a month, which resulted in interns taking over as directors.
In his statement, Professor McGowan went on to clarify that the Department’s interns are required to attend a two hour seminar on teaching and an hour-long team meeting, alongside three to five hours of teaching, with one to two hours of preparation per contact hour. This would suggest that interns work a maximum of eighteen hours per week.
However, one intern, who spent two academic terms working at the Department, told Trinity News, “It was not unusual to be more than 12 hours at work every day.”
Another former intern supported this claim, writing in a communication to this reporter that, “On average, I worked about eight to 10 hours a day between Monday and Friday.” She added, “We were not able to do much besides our internship. We had little time for all those the things you think about when going abroad – like party, travelling, etc. – due to our long working hours and exhaustion.” For the entire time during which they worked, unpaid interns received no assistance from the Department with either accommodation or transport costs. Instead, they are expected to apply for funding or an Erasmus grant from their home university or the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). One former intern who received financial assistance through the Erasmus exchange programme said it “barely covered [his] rent”.
Though some interns felt they gained a valuable experience working at Trinity College, others were less impressed with the treatment of interns.
According to another former intern, “It was clear that we were not really considered part of the department. We were not invited to any departmental events. I remember one incident, when one of the PhD students was celebrating her degree, or a publication or something, and everybody was drinking wine right outside our office.
We didn’t dare go outside and join the staff, because nobody told us about it or asked if we wanted to join… I was surprised at this behaviour because we took over such a large amount of the classes and some interns had been there for nearly a full academic year, which in my opinion would have been long enough for other members of staff to at least know their names.”
The HR Department did not respond to a request for a statement on the issue of unpaid internship at Trinity College, Dublin. However, the Irish Federation of University Teachers (IFUT), the union which represents the college’s lecturers, echoed SIPTU’s remarks.
While reluctant to speak about the specific working conditions of interns at the Department of Germanic Studies, IFUT president, Mike Jennings, stated, “Internships have to be a genuine training opportunity. We would look unfavourably on any situation in which interns are asked to do on an unpaid basis what other people are usually paid to do.” Mr. Jennings added that it was the first instance he had heard of unpaid interns being used at a third-level language department.