Hypocrisy turns our stomachs, no matter our political party affiliation.
Taking full advantage of that little truism, the Employment Policies Institute put out word this week that the sponsors of legislation in Congress to bump up the minimum wage aren't exactly living up to the ideal behind their bill.
As it turns out, 96 percent of the House and Senate lawmakers behind the legislation do not pay their interns, according to the institute's research.
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"The same members of Congress who are supporting a 40 percent wage hike on private sector employers are simultaneously failing to provide any wages to their own employee interns," the organization said on its related website, which it calls minimumwage.com.
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I hadn't heard of the Employment Policies Institute before now, so I spent a few minutes checking out their site. Not surprisingly, there's a conservative bent to its work.
EPI says it sponsors nonpartisan research conducted by independent economists at major universities around the country. Well, that's technically true. Thing is, there's nothing on its site that advances the position of those in favor of hiking the minimum wage, so the folks at EPI are clearly partisans.
But I don't think that really matters. And I don't think it matters that D.C. interns have historically been unpaid.
The fairness of unpaid internships has been at the center of several high-profile lawsuits of late. In December, the Supreme Court of New York ordered TV host Charlie Rose's production company to pay up to $250,000 to settle a class-action suit brought by former interns who argued that, although they had agreed to work for free, they should have been paid.
In response, some employers have unfortunately decided to eliminate or at least cut back their internship programs. But perhaps those weren't the best internships anyway.
Internships can and do help launch careers by providing experience, networking opportunities and a chance to build your resume.
But this isn't complicated and shouldn't be political. Asking people to labor for you without compensating them is simply exploitation, no matter how exciting the work of fetching coffee or running to pick up a skirt at the cleaners might be.
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