Unpaid jobs: The new normal? (chilling news from Fortune Management)

The excerpt below explains why companies aren't hiring. They've gotten people to the point of working for free--exploitation gone as far as it can go. Presumably, they will cycle through the free workers. That is, the folks working for free will take on lots of credit card debt to get them through, hoping they will get a paid job. A few will. Some will get temp work. Some will take on second and third jobs. It doesn't matter to Capital--free labor is good enough. Who cares about the law? (Actually, last night I heard a Silicon Valley entrepreneur say that rules are outmoded; they were designed for a previous business environment. Anyone who wants to make it big has to make his own rules. Etc. The chilling truth of the so-called new economy which is nothing another than another form of ongoing deprivation and capital accumulation.

With nearly 14 million unemployed workers in America, many have gotten so desperate that they're willing to work for free. While some businesses are wary of the legal risks and supervision such an arrangement might require, companies that have used free workers say it can pay off when done right.

"People who work for free are far hungrier than anybody who has a salary, so they're going to outperform, they're going to try to please, they're going to be creative," says Kelly Fallis, chief executive of Remote Stylist, a Toronto and New York-based startup that provides Web-based interior design services. "From a cost savings perspective, to get something off the ground, it's huge. Especially if you're a small business."

In the last three years, Fallis has used about 50 unpaid interns for duties in marketing, editorial, advertising, sales, account management and public relations.  She's convinced it's the wave of the future in human resources. "Ten years from now, this is going to be the norm," she says.

via management.fortune.cnn.com

Comments

[Alexander Lee]

It's an aspect of "too many people".

In fact, one way for a person to get their "dream job" is to prove they are worth hiring so that the company they work for sees that they can't do without them...

[The Mathmos]

If it's an aspect of too many people, then no matter how competent you appear, they have much to gain in continuing the free labor cycle. That's the whole point. They CAN do without anybody. No one can claim to be able to personally prove anything to companies that have been outsourcing their own mothers to the Third World for 30+ years.

[Jodi]

"Too many people" is one of the stupidest things I've ever read.

But maybe I am missing what is clearly meant ironically--of course capitalism produces and relies on a mass of free workers, free in the sense of the lumpenproletariat and reserved army of the unemployed.

The sick cruel functionality of the American cult of the individual is that it convinced everyone that we are each special and unique and hence that the dream job is with-in our reach if only we: get a proper education (financed with debt), build our personal brand (a 'seminar' offered by career services where I teach), and are willing to go the extra mile (work without pay, whether this means as an intern or extra hours). Anyone not willing to do this, according to the ideology that prevents us from believing the truth of structural unemployment, doesn't have what it takes or simply is lazy and undeserving.

[Joe Clement]

This article juxtaposes well against the one you posted not long ago about basic-income. The problem seems less that people "work for free," which could describe a lot of desirable and fulfilling activity, than that their participation in such work does little or nothing to sustain/improve their condition. I mean, for some "doing something" may also be a matter of breaking boredom or monotony, but then it's not like you can "do what you want," because you "obviously" have to be doing stuff that will "get you ahead" and prepare you for a future employer. Those on food-stamps, like myself, are afforded some wiggle-room here, but it's nothing like the peace-of-mind that I could seem a basic income offering someone who wants to do something not currently (possibly ever) economically "prudent."

[Gavan Titley]

In the laboratory of sublimated neoliberal reconstruction (Ireland) this is government policy:

"We will create over 45,000 additional work experience, training, and internship opportunities"

This is the 'employmentesque' policy of the new governing party, Fine Gael. www.finegael2011.com/pdf/Fine%20Gael%20Manifesto%20low-res.pdf

[Robert Allen]

"In fact, one way for a person to get their "dream job" is to prove they are worth hiring so that the company they work for sees that they can't do without them..."

This is the root of the "temp to hire" philosophy that is so prevalent today but I want to talk about what comes after: after the initial period of acclimation, if a person manages to hang on for a few years, the process of what I call "operational excellence", which means a structured streamlined process of speed oriented, depersonalized computer assisted work, becomes "operational arrogance", that is, a person falls into a trap of rule bending and corner cutting in order to excel in the "stats" or numbers game, because there is a false sense that the boss "can't do without me". That's when they break out the rule book and throw it at you on your way out the door.
In a rational world, which this isn't, "the more you know the slower you go", so I used to pretend I was a new employee who didn't know anything so I could go faster and do whatever the computer told me to do. But the bosses weren't fooled; the only reason I hung on so long at the former Baby Bell phone company and quit on my own terms was because we had a union....

[Xan Cassiel]

I believe Colbert would call it "employmentness".

[Account Deleted]

With various calls to deregulate business in the name of the free market, one has to wonder what precisely these freedoms consist of. Are they not (a) the freedom to starve and (b) the freedom to starve enough to enter into modern day serfdom?

At least serfs worked a plot of land and (supposedly) received protection from their local fiefs. One cannot say that most internships produce as many benefits.

I'm curious how closely modern-day serfdom is tied into precarious labour --- I know my own "work" consists of a mix of paid and unpaid labour, the majority of which is unpaid. However the 2008 recession brought on the full onslaught of what might be seen as the generalized precarity of labour in the West. Would it be accurate to begin discussing post-precarious labour, i.e., non-waged serfdom? And at what level does one begin discussing untethered slavery?

There are differences, of course, between manacled slavery and 21st century volunteerisms. Internets aren't bought & sold, nor are they physically contained; however the conditions of the world (for them) is such that the world itself exists as a prison of sorts; one is cut-off from resources, capital, education and paid labour so that the only option left is to voluntarily enter into unpaid labour, i.e., contemporary conditions of serfdom. The operative of this volunteerism, like the concept of freedom that pairs with it, is once again a choice of the double-bind: starve, or work for "free" in the hopes of not-starving. That's some concept of freedom.

And what happens when others volunteer labour? It devalorizes paid labour, especially in cognitive labour (i.e. the many forms of computerized work --- the field of design is a prime example). Why pay proper dollar for a website when some kid will do it for you for free for his or her portfolio? Of course the technical reasons are many (is it still true that one gets what one pays for?, i.e. that use value is related to exchange value?). However for many businesses and would-be-employers the short-term gain of finished (if incomplete and hasty) work is better than paying out even a meager amount to receive professional, finished work. This logic is one of haste... it's as if all are trying to do as much as they can with very little, so that someone, somewhere, can make a living.