Facebook status debate on unpaid labour

Iain Marlow... thinks that non-profits are ironic, because they exploit middle and upper middle class first world workers for the peculiarly never-ending poverty of the third world, which they can't figure out how to solve.
Yesterday at 12:17am · Comment · LikeUnlike · View Feedback (17)Hide Feedback (17)

You, Jia Muzhang Muke and Chiara Capraro like this.

Rachel De Lazzer
interesting thought, though they DO at least make a difference by this less than efficient means
Yesterday at 12:33am · Delete


Dariusz Grabka
are you suggesting that middle/upper classes are being impoverished by not-for-profits?
Yesterday at 9:37am · Delete


Iain Marlow
Not really. Merely exploiting. And by doing so, they promote a way of employment that naturally excludes those who can't afford to do unwaged work.
Yesterday at 10:23am · Delete

Chiara Capraro
iain, could not agree more.
Yesterday at 10:25am · Delete

Matthew Beatty
It is unpaid work. So if you can't afford to do it than what does it matter that rich people are promoting it amongst themselves as a way to assuage their guilt for being in that very economic situation which allows them to volunteer? If these positions were paid then it would go to skilled workers (not the poor) and/ or they would be government jobs (Hide! It's socialism!).
Yesterday at 10:58am · Delete

Iain Marlow
Matt, great point. Perhaps the poor, unskilled workers are at least partially unskilled because they never had access to skill-enhancing but unpaid internships? (By this, I don't mean impoverished ghetto residents running Amnesty, but a more lukewarm assertion.)
Yesterday at 11:04am · Delete

Mark Rubenstein
There was an op-ed in the FT about this last week
Yesterday at 11:08am · Delete

Iain Marlow
Yeah, Britain is having a Parliamentary inquiry about the ethics of companies (not just non-profits) using unpaid internships. It's hit the MPs themselves, too.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2007/jan/16/houseofcommons.uk1
Yesterday at 11:21am · Delete

Matthew Beatty
I read about this a bunch while in uni. G.B. Shaw wrote about this quite a bit because he saw all the charity getting in the way of real reform/revolution. All the rich people propped up the glorious inequality just enough to keep it going. In Canada our non-profit sector is huge! Like bigger than manufacturing huge. But I think very little goes to... Read More helping the poor of the developing world. It's more about sewing up some safety net holes -- some might say a job government should be doing. So yes. There's irony all over the place.
Yesterday at 11:23am · Delete

Iain Marlow
From the same article: Some MPs offer a flat fee of £500 a month or pay expenses. One Liberal Democrat, John Hemming, the MP for BirminghamYardley, offered potential interns a bed in his home to ensure students from wider social backgrounds could apply for voluntary posts.

He said that he had since dropped employing interns altogether. "I am aware... Read More that the present system means that only people from wealthy backgrounds or a particular class can take up such offers which is why I offered some accommodation.
Yesterday at 11:23am · Delete

Matthew Beatty
This is the same argument from when they deregulated law school and med school -- goodbye pro bono and medicins sans frontieres.
Yesterday at 11:26am · Delete

Dariusz Grabka
hmm .. i guess i see the mere existence of voluntary labour as quite an advancement of our society. i highly, highly doubt the majority of volunteers are upper-middle-class or higher people. I would suspect the opposite actually: majority of volunteer work is done by the poor, for the poor, to improve conditions of the poor.

in that sense i think it's a myth that these jobs are created to feed our guilt complex - higher awareness, more free time amongst the working class, and capability aren't necessarily responses to guilt ... but a product of better education, higher incomes, etc.

and i'm not too sure that these can be paid positions just by virtue that they're challenging or worthwhile. the value added is very systemically low, but to the poor people that do the volunteering, the local value is very high.... Read More

internships are a different story i guess ... i see them akin to $20k/pa residencies for physicians after med school. :)
Yesterday at 11:33am · Delete

Iain Marlow
Yo Dariusz, You're right that a lot of volunteers within cities, at cook-outs or kitchens or things like that, aren't upper middle class. But we're not really talking about voluntary soup kitchen labour, but the institutionalized habit among NGOs of employing 20-something unwaged workers, who wouldn't be able to afford their internships without some form of inherited wealth.
Yesterday at 12:36pm · Delete

Dariusz Grabka
yeah i'm not familiar with that world at all. though kirsti has been filling me in somewhat. i would guess that if a) they all rely on cheap/free labour b) operating grants from CIDA .. that there are too many NGO's?
Yesterday at 12:58pm · Delete

Iain Marlow
That's, likely, a remarkably accurate assertion.
Yesterday at 1:02pm · Delete