UCSA proposes tax incentive for paid internships
By Emily Liu
March 4, 2014 12:23 a.m.
University of California student leaders pledged support Saturday for a bill that would incentivize companies to increase the number of paid internships they offer to college students in California.
The UC Student Association, a systemwide organization that advocates for UC students, passed a resolution at its monthly meeting this weekend calling for the revival of a bill that would grant tax credits to private businesses that offer paid internships in California, said Kareem Aref, UCSA president.
Currently under the Fair Labor Standards Act, internships can be unpaid if they satisfy six criteria, such as if they offer training similar to an educational environment, are beneficial to the intern and so long as the intern’s work does not displace the work of regular employees.
The UCSA hopes to revive the bill for next year, which failed this state legislative cycle in February. The bill proposed a 33 percent tax subsidy for private companies that employ college interns to turn their unpaid internships into paid ones, said Michael Amster, a third-year history student at UC Santa Cruz.
The student co-authors of the bill, Amster and Michael Kramer, a third-year history student at UCLA, are not affiliated with UCSA. They approached UCSA for student support to push the bill through the Assembly.
Amster first proposed the idea for this bill to California State Assemblyman Scott Wilk (R – Santa Clarita). Wilk later backed out of the bill and the students went to State Assemblyman Das Williams (D – Santa Barbara), chair of the Committee on Higher Education, with whom Kramer had worked before.
Amster’s bill proposes that college interns be paid the minimum wage, which is currently $8 an hour. The internship tax credit given to companies, however, would be capped at $10 million to keep the program affordable, Kramer said.
Amster said his idea for the bill was inspired when he read a letter from a college student complaining about not being compensated for work identical to what other regular paid employees were doing during his internship last summer at the City Council office of Assemblyman Bob Blumenfield.
“I am strongly against intern exploitation, because unpaid internships are basically free labor, which should not be the case,” Amster said. “Interns deserve to be compensated for their work.”
Williams submitted the bill to the state legislature in January, but it was dropped in February when no legislators decided to take it up, Amster said.
Amster said he hopes that with the backing of UCSA and other student associations in California the bill might return to the legislature for consideration in 2015.
Paid internships lead to more and better jobs than unpaid internships do, according to a 2013 survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers. The survey found that about 63 percent of paid interns were offered at least one full-time position after graduation. Only 37 percent of unpaid interns received at least one job offer, compared to 37 percent of students who took no internship.
About half of the internships taken by graduating college seniors were unpaid, according to the survey. Of these unpaid internships, 38.1 percent were in the for-profit, private sector, which is targeted by Amster and Kramer’s proposal.
Kramer said having more paid internships would also help college students pay off their student loan debt.
“We’re trying to create paying internships so that students can have the money to pay off some of their debt,” Amster said.
About 52 percent of undergraduates in California graduate have student loan debt, averaging more than $20,000, according to The Project on Student Debt, a nonprofit initiative that aims to educate people on rising student loan debt.
“Many students today have to work unpaid internships to gain the real-world experience needed for their professions, but this wasn’t the case 15 years ago,” Kramer said.
Last summer, interns filed multiple high profile lawsuits against large companies in the US, including Warner Music Group and Fox Searchlight, claiming that the companies did not pay interns for work that was equivalent to that for regular employees.
Amster said the proposed bill would not only help college students, but could also help companies avoid such litigation battles in the future.
“I think it’s a way of meeting businesses and interns halfway – businesses get legal, subsidized labor and interns get their works’ due,” Amster said.
