Does your country have an unpaid Internship? Are you the one who experiences it? I don't know the answers but this is very common around the world. The fundamental work ethics says the 'fair exchange' and in this unpaid internship, a fair exchange is totally absent. But, there are lots of arguments against and in support of it. Let's talk about it a little!
The first thing that I understand, no matter what your labor law is, organization rule is or culture is; you have to pay for work. If you are offering someone to do something without 'exchange' it's a bluff. That doesn't mean the organization has to pay financially. It can be non-monetary also.
Don't take the non-monetary option as a benefit for the organization. Without paying anything; the experience they get, the certificate they achieved, future opportunities the organization created for them doesn't count. Those the intern achieved but this is not only what they deserve. They deserve payment.
I have seen some organization offers transport, launch ie. but no wages. That sounds okay but it depends on the period of the internship program and the characteristics of the works. If the work is creative, if they get first-hand experience on machine learning or something similar it's fair enough. But if it's only some paperwork and long term this is not fair nor ethical. As the intern has no option, working with a reputed organization opens opportunities to them, so they choose to work without pay. But, as the person of the organization, we need to be more ethical about this.
This thing can't solve only with the laws. If we don't realize we are braking the ethics this scenario will not change. People don't talk about it or this doesn't bother them much as this happens around the world and in some countries getting non-paid intern are very easy so they do that. But, I think this culture has a huge impact on the mental health of those intern, organization environment and overall on the labor market. That's why we need to take care of this issue.
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