How Bad is Your Job?

Regular readers of this space (assuming I have readers) are already aware that over the last couple of decades I have had some of the best and worst jobs in North America, and possibly the industrialized world. I realize that most of the things about which I am complaining are really First-World problems, and that in the grade scheme of things having to work 25 hours straight at a drug store, including having to clean the Incontinent Supplies aisle because the janitor has called in sick for the fifth time this week, does not compare to death by starvation, death by disease, death by wild animals, death by intestinal parasites, death by shooting as the result of political oppression (death by political parasites?), death due to heavy metals exposure, death by exposure to cold, death by exposure to heat, or living in certain parts of New Jersey. But that said, I still think that anyone who has ever been charged $450 for a job reference by the firm where they completed an unpaid internship has a genuine grievance…

If you missed it, you can pick up the original story on the Guardian UK website here if you want. The basic story is fairly simple, though; a UK-based think-tank called Civitatis International has reportedly been charging its “junior associates” as much as £300 (about $450 USD) for each time they want a job reference. The company insists that the “junior associates” aren’t really unpaid interns, and there does appear to be some evidence in support of that statement; apparently, the “junior associates” were paying on the order of £1,600 (about $2,400 USD) for the privilege of fetching coffee and doing general menial work. There was also a charge for becoming “fellows” of the firm, a further expense offered to “successful” graduates of the “junior associates” program, although apparently all you got for the $600 to $900 additional dollars was the opportunity to put the title of “Fellow” on your resume…

Now, we should probably acknowledge that the use of unpaid internships has been on the rise for a number of years now, and an increasing number of companies are promising college students and recent graduates valuable job experience and eventual assistance in getting a paying job in exchange for unpaid labor. Reports of unpaid internships that turn out to offer no training or experience in anything other than unpaid scuttwork and are basically the company exploiting their so-called interns for free labor are also becoming increasingly common. However, this is the first example I can recall seeing of a company that is not merely offering to allow people to work for it for free but also asking them to pay for the privilege – and for the recommendations that are one of the jobs only remaining benefits…

It isn’t clear from the original article whether working for Civitatis International has ever helped anyone to get a high-level (or at least high-paying) job – or, indeed, to find employment at all. It is possible that spending several thousand dollars for this experience is as effective to job-seekers as paying a similar amount of money to a for-profit college or training school would be. It’s certainly no more outlandish than some of the employee/job-seeker funded executive search organizations I’ve run across in my travels, and those seem to remain popular despite all reason or logic to the contrary. The company certainly claims to be getting all of its “graduates” policy jobs in the $36,000 to $50,000 range, although they backed down under a reporter’s direct challenge and admitted that they have not actually had a 100% placement rate. Unfortunately, that very claim undermines the entire logic for this outrage…

If Civitatis International is really placing 100% of its “graduates” then why would they need assistance finding work, let alone letters of recommendation? And if their “junior associate” program is charging $3,000 or more and producing nothing in return, why are they then demanding more money instead of offering apologies (and possibly refunds) when their “graduates” have to scramble to get a job? Both of these claims can’t be true, which leads to the very real possibility that neither one of them is true; that in fact Civitatis International is nothing more than the UK version of Trump University and similar high-end scam offerings…

So tell me: what demeaning, exploitive, fraudulent things has your employer done recently? Because whatever it is, there’s a good chance that there are some folks in the UK who can top it…