Will mandatory compensation diminish the number of internships?

‘Some students only earn three euros an hour,’ ISO chair Mylou Miché tells the audience in Nieuwspoort. An eighteen-year-old working in the supermarket earns twice as much, and the wage can be four times higher for a twenty-something. 

Students can consider themselves lucky if they earn three euros an hour on their internships. Over fifty percent of intermediate vocational trainees receive nothing at all. Future teachers at the university of applied sciences level often teach classes of their own, though sixty percent of interthey receive nothing at all for sixty percent of the traineeships.

Unpaid traineeship
‘Internship fees are not a favour, they are a right.‘ Miché addresses the members of parliament in the audience, who will not get onstage to speak. In two weeks, they will discuss internship compensation with the minister of education, debating whether interns indeed have a 'right' to be paid.

Student organisations ISO, JOBmbo and CNV Jongeren once again list their arguments to push the parliamentary debate in their favour. They say that students are already struggling financially, that the pressure to perform is high, and that their mental health is vulnerable. Those with little money cannot afford an unpaid internship, even though internships form a compulsory part of the programme in some cases.

Not in the law
Last week, Minister Bruins announced to the Lower House that he would like everyone to receive ‘appropriate compensation’, but he will not enforce it by law. He hopes that employers and unions will include internship compensation in collective labour agreements. Currently, only 17 percent of collective labour agreements do so.

In the panel discussion that follows the students' plea, Joany Krijt says that she prefers to follow the collective labour agreement route too. Krijt chairs the board of MBO Utrecht and is the collective labour agreement negotiator on behalf of regional training centres. She has included an internship allowance of 250 euros in their collective labour agreement (after all, regional training centres also have interns).

‘If the amount is established by law, employers will move towards that. I know that some internship allowances are much higher than 250 euros. An IT intern can get as much as 1,000 euros per month. I wouldn't want to deny them that,’ she says.

Weak position
However, the collective labour agreement route is flawed too. No less than 25 percent of employees in the Netherlands are not under a collective labour agreement at all, says Casper Cornelisse, who chairs CNV Jongeren, the youth organisation of the Dutch National Federation of Christian Trade Unions. ‘These are often companies in new sectors, such as tech, where many young people work.’ Therefore, ISO is considering a statutory minimum allowance of 500 euros per month instead of the collective labour agreement route, according to Miché.

Besides, students are in a ‘weak’ position in collective labour agreement negotiations, reminds CNV negotiator Mirjam van Leussen. ‘As a union, we depend on the willingness of our members to take action. Students are usually not unionised. They don't have much and only stay at the organisation for a short while. So, in the end, we depend on companies' goodwill.’

In addition, a collective labour agreement only applies to employees, but interns are not considered employees. Internships are seen as a learning opportunity in the Netherlands, even though they do perform work for the company, emphasises Arend Hardorff, board member of The Hague University of Applied Sciences.

Shortage of supervisors
Hardorff has noticed that internships in the healthcare sector are sometimes difficult to arrange. ‘For example, we deliberately slowed down the intake for the dietitian programme because there are not enough internship supervisors in the field. If compensation was mandatory, this would result in fewer internship places.’

Hardorff is ‘in favour of an obligation, in principle’. According to him, twenty percent of students who approach the dean are under financial stress. He also believes that students learn less from unpaid internships: ‘It makes students less motivated. I also think companies take supervision more seriously when they pay for the internship.’

Opinions about this issue differ at the Dutch house of Representatives. Mikal Tseggai (GroenLinks-PvdA) has been arguing in favour of a mandatory internship allowance for quite some time. PVV member Nico Uppelschoten, on the other hand, does not welcome the idea as he feels that it does not belong in the collective labour agreement and makes no sense in law. Though he is in favour of interns being compensated, he would prefer to 'just leave it up to employers.’