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Employee Interning Simulation

Decent Essays

The Ontario Ministry of Labor uses the Employment Standards Act, 2000, to enforce an employees right to fairness in the workplace, but is not holding up its end for student internships. This act defines an employee as “a person who receives training from a person who is an employer”, and also “an individual receiving training from a person who is an employer is an employee”. In this legal definition, interns are employees and are required by law to be compensated by monetary rewards. Companies do not seem to agree with this because the Ontario law also states that it does not apply to “an individual who performs work under a program approved by a college of applied arts and technology or a university.” But in June 2011, The Ontario Ministry of Labor released a guideline on unpaid internships. The guideline states ” an intern is an employee and must be paid at least minimum wage”. The Ontario NDP policy on internships will help hold employers accountable to this law by protecting students in the Protecting Interns and …show more content…

Internship job ads may say that students get to learn from a top executive, but in reality they barely get any mentorship opportunities. Instead, students are doing monotonous tasks by making copies and coffee runs. In this case employers cannot defend against the experience being more valuable than pay because the interns are doing undervalued work. If this is the case for the majority of internships available for students than co-op school placements are really not as beneficial as they seem. A typical co-op term is four months and if there are few paid positions available than students would have to work part time or full time hours elsewhere on top of cooperative education to cover school and living expenses. This allows and unequal and unfair playing field for students who can’t afford to work for free, where students who can get more

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