Somewhere along the line, most of us collegiettes have to bite the bullet and take on an unpaid internship. Even though you may be toting around an empty wallet for a while, there are some real benefits to being an unpaid intern – you gain real-world career experience to add to your resume, you can often receive college credit for the work you’re doing and you can make some great connections in your field. However, there are detriments to unpaid internships beyond simply not receiving pay for your hours: there are no laws to protect unpaid interns from sexual harassment in the workplace.
For example, if you’re working as an unpaid intern and your boss starts to make unwanted advances towards you – whether by pressing against you, touching you inappropriately or saying lewd comments – there’s nothing you can do about it. You could complain to HR, but as an unpaid worker for that company, you would have no protection against sexual harassment. So you’re trapped – and your creepy boss gets off on this technicality and is in no way forced to change his or her behavior.
If you think that’s as wrong as we do, and you want to protect yourself and all of your friends who may take on positions as unpaid interns in the future, then sign DoSomething.org’s petition telling the New York City Council to protect unpaid interns from sexual harassment.
Make an immediate impact on this New York law. DoSomething.org will deliver this signed petition to New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn before her term closes at the end of the year, and with your support, we can make sure that NYC protects unpaid interns from unwanted advances in the workplace, and hopefully inspire cities across the country to do the same.