Calling All Interns – come and show politicians how much you contribute to the UK economy

In aid of the launch of Intern Nation, NUS and Intern Aware are organising a publicity stunt on the 8th June outside the House of Commons to bring press attention to the contribution interns make to the UK economy.

We want politicians to come face to face with the exploitation faced by young people working for free across the country, but to do so WE NEED YOUR HELP

We anticipate high press attention for this action so we need lots of interns there to get maximium effect. Come along to the event from 12pm-2pm. If you are interested in attending please register your interest by emailing susan.nash@nus.org.uk<mailto:susan.nash@nus.org.uk with your name, contact details, postcode and stating if you are currently doing a internship.

Intern Nation – book launch

7 June, 6-8.30pm 

Tuesday 17th May – assembling at 5.30pm, University College Hospital, Gower Street, WC1 (near Euston, Warren St & Euston Square tube stations) for 6pm march to the Department of Health on Whitehall.

Click here for further details: Kill the Bill

BA employee update

For the fourth time in two years, cabin crew at British Airways have shown their determination to see justice, respect and dignity restored at BA by voting to take industrial action.

In a fantastic show of continued resilience, BA cabin crew have responded to continued attacks by British Airways on their union organisation as well as suspensions and dismissal of colleagues and the ignoring of collective agreements with a resounding yes vote to continued industrial action.

To improve social mobility in Westminster, interns need to be paid

Branch Chair Max Freedman was quoted  in the following article in the Daily Mail on unpaid interns in Parliament.

MPs may face investigation by the taxman over their refusal to pay the minimum wage to interns working in their offices.

Government sources say HM Revenue and Customs is considering ‘targeted enforcement’ in areas where internships are ‘abused’.

Areas of concern are understood to include Parliament, where interns are routinely expected to work for nothing – and  industries such as the law and the arts.

Hundreds of MPs are thought to employ unpaid interns. The crackdown is part of a strategy to open up internships to more youngsters. Critics say failing to pay interns makes it impossible for many from less affluent backgrounds to gain experience.

A Government source said:

‘At the moment you are supposed to pay people who do internships, but the rules are widely flouted at Westminster, as well as in industries like advertising, the media and the law.

‘HMRC are now considering targeted enforcement in areas where there is a problem.  Everyone has been looking the other way on this, but it is not right.’

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg was accused of ‘total hypocrisy’ this week when he criticised middle-class parents for using their connections to help children get internships, after it emerged that Mr Clegg’s millionaire father had helped him get an internship and his first paid job.

He said the job market ‘should be about what you know, not who you know’.

The launch of the Government’s social mobility strategy was overshadowed when it emerged that Mr Clegg’s millionaire father had helped him get both an internship and his first paid job in his youth.

In an article yesterday Mr Clegg admitted he had been ‘lucky’ in life, but insisted this did not disqualify him from wanting to tackle inequality. He said many at Westminster had enjoyed a similar leg-up from their parents.

He said:

‘I have been lucky. When I was a teenager I benefited from securing a summer job, partly thanks to a helping hand from my father.

‘For most people that kind of fortunate start in life is unusual. But when I was debating the issue in Parliament yesterday I was surrounded by people who have either worked as interns or employ them in their offices, many not hired by a fair and open process.’

Yesterday, Clegg’s deputy Simon Hughes became embroiled in the row. He has advertised an unpaid office job while calling on universities to help poorer students.

He said later that it was ‘an opportunity to gather vital work experience’ – and no intern was taken on for more than four months.

Westminster is notorious for its intern culture, which makes it all but impossible for children from poorer backgrounds to get a break.

A survey by the Unite union found that interns in Parliament carry out an astonishing 18,000 hours of unpaid work a week. Some 44 per cent of interns said MPs did not even pay them travel or food expenses. Some MPs employ more than five interns in their offices. Up to 500 interns are operating in parliament at any one time.

Max Freedman, chairman of the Parliamentary branch of Unite, welcomed the prospect of a crackdown by the HMRC.

Mr Freedman said:

‘There is no doubt that the letter of the law is being broken on an industrial scale in parliament. Everyone glosses over it, but the law is very clear – if you are doing an internship with regular hours then you are a worker and entitled to the minimum wage.

‘No-one wants to talk about it because the MPs are getting free labour without dipping into their overstretched staffing budgets, and the interns are hoping to get a job and can’t speak out.

‘But it is damaging to social mobility that people are not being paid, because it means that only those wealthy enough to work for nothing can afford to do it. Increasingly that means that only that kind of person is able to get into politics.

‘Parliament should be setting an example on employment standards rather than sinking to the bottom.’

HMRC last night confirmed it was ‘considering targeted enforcement in areas or sectors where internships are commonplace’, but declined to comment on the exact areas of interest.

Last week the Deputy Prime Minister published his social mobility strategy

Nick Clegg launched his social mobility strategy amid great fanfare last week. Clegg, a former intern himself, says he no longer wants to see  people get internships in  Parliament just because their parents “whisper in the ear” of the right person at their golf club. He also says that he wants to see interns properly remunerated. We welcome this push for change, but the strategy won’t mean much if the place where Clegg himself works – Parliament – remains the preserve of the wealthy and well-connected.

The fact that MPs across all parties use unpaid internships is well known. In 2009, Unite the Union estimated that interns carried out 18,000 hours unpaid work each week in Westminster, and 44% didn’t even get travel and food expenses. The branch has argued that in practice Parliamentary interns are actually ‘workers’ not ‘volunteers’ and are being exploited. Expenses-only internships also means that only wealthy people can even consider applying to be an intern. It also means most of the interns working in Parliament are from the London area.

One of the reasons the practice is continuing is because the staffing budget limit for MPs is so low it makes it difficult to find the funds to pay interns. Nevertheless, MPs should not be taking on interns to undertake work without paying them at least the National Minimum Wage (NMW). The demand from Members’ offices is also going to increase when the number of MPs is slashed by 50 in the coming years, so interns will likely be required to take on more unpaid work and in greater numbers. The fact that MPs will represent more people over wider areas is not going to reduce the amount of work that is expected of them by their constituents.

Online campaigns from organisations like 38 Degrees have opened up new avenues for communications with MPs. Its website boasts that 250,000 people contacted their MPs about the Government’s plans for the NHS. If they are to get re-elected, MPs have got to be more accessible than ever to their constituents – online, face to face and in the media. To do this they need to rely on staff and, in reality, interns as well.

Nick Clegg needs to go further than just saying he wants to see better internships – he needs to support action to change the way things are in Parliament. His new social mobility strategy looks hypocritical when Parliament can’t get its own House in order. Parliament and its MPs should lead by example. We want to see interns paid at least the NMW and ideally the Living Wage or London Living Wage. At the bare minimum every genuine volunteer should receive expenses for travel, lunch costs and receive useful professional training during their placement. No-one should be forced to pay for the privilege of working in Parliament.

Nick Clegg needs to support Unite’s campaign for IPSA to create a dedicated internship fund for MPs and support the Speaker’s scheme to find sponsorship for interns. Today we have written to Nick Clegg to ask him to work with us on this.

If Nick Clegg really wants to fight nepotism he should start here.

Shelley Phelps and Nick Quin, Interns Officers

More on this story at political website ePolitix

The poll will be open until Friday 22^nd April and is open to anyone who works for an MP, is based in Westminster and has a parliament.uk email address. To encourage you to take part we will be giving away an brand new iPad, dinner for two and Roux on Parliament Square and three runners up will receive a bottle of Champagne each.

Winners will be randomly selected from all correctly filled in surveys. This is open to all Westminster based staff who work for an MP including part-time staff and unpaid interns- please spread the word around your office!

The link for the survey is:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Parliament

The Procedure Committee is conducting an inquiry into the sittings of the House and the Parliamentary Calendar and will take the views of MPs’ staff into account. The branch would like to make a submission and we have secured an extended deadline of next Monday 11 April.

If substantial changes are made to the hours the House sits this will have an impact on staff so please send through any comments to Political Officer Lauren Edwards at lauren.edwards@unitepsbranch.org for inclusion before 5pm this Friday 8 April.

The Committee invites evidence on:

• How the role of an MP has changed in recent years (a good opportunity to bring up increased casework loads)
• What the role of an MP should be and how this is reflected in time spent at Westminster and in the constituency
• What are the defects and the strengths of the current patterns
• What are the constraints on reform of the sitting patterns
• What pattern of sittings over the course of a month or the year would best enable MPs to perform their role
• What pattern of timings for sittings on days spent in Westminster would be most effective (e.g. whether the Hours could made more family-friendly)
• How should the way business is conducted in the Commons be altered to accommodate any new pattern of sitting hours, days or weeks
• What changes should be made to the process for considering Private Member’s bills in particular (the only business currently considered on Fridays)Should greater use be made of Westminster Hall
• How can select and public bill committee meetings be accommodated within any new arrangement
• What other factors should be considered in proposing changes to sitting hours (eg impact on staff of the House and Members staff, services to Members, cost, work of Government departments, public access to debates, the media)

More details available at the Procedure Committee page on the inquiry

Please note: the branch has now submitted our response to the inquiry – Procedure committee submission – Unite PS Branch

Tuesday 12 April, 7pm, NUT Hamilton House, Mabledon Place, London, WC1H (Euston/Kings Cross tubes)

With Comandante Victor Dreke Cruz, veteran of the Bay of Pigs victory, comrade of Che Guevara in the Congo and President of the Cuba-Africa Friendship Association

Click here for further details: Bay of Pigs march 2011

There were some wins for the branch in the new expenses scheme, but a lot more needs to improve

Below is a summary of the changes IPSA has made to the expenses scheme in March 2011 that affect MPs’ staff. We will be raising these issues with IPSA at a meeting on 6 April. If you have any comments to add please email our Political Officer at lauren.edwards@unitepsbranch.org

Staffing Budget

The staffing budget has been increased by around £5k to £115K, which IPSA says is to cover the 1% increase in National Insurance and to provide “a degree of flexibility – for example, to allow for career progression”. We don’t think this is enough to off-set the cut that resulted from transferring MPs’ employer contributions to their staff pensions into this budget and will have no impact on career progression. There is no cost of living increase.

The budget is still based on an assessment of MP staff needs in 2007 by the Senior Salaries Review Board (SSRB) of 3.5 staff members per MP. A lot has changed since then – email campaigns and the recession mean our workloads have increased dramatically. IPSA admits that the average number of staff per MP is now 4.2 staff, so we will question why the budget hasn’t been uplifted to reflect this. IPSA says it will “undertake further work to establish the implications of the rising volumes of casework in some constituencies”. We will ask for more details on this and continue to push for a fresh SSRB review.

IPSA has also not allowed London-weighting in the staffing budget. Staff of London MPs are given higher pay grades in recognition of the higher costs of living in London (just as London MPs are given a London Area Living Payment), and yet their overall staffing budget has not been increased to accommodate this.

We welcome the inclusion of payments for one-off health and welfare costs associated with provision for staffing support, such as eyesight tests and occupational health assessments. We are pleased apprenticeships are now included in the scheme.

Publication of salaries

Thankfully IPSA has accepted our argument that MPs’ staff budgets are already public, and that there is no need to publish individual staff salaries and job descriptions below that, except in line with public sector norms, above £58,200. However, the salary details of connected parties will still be published in full.

Pay grades

IPSA says the staffing budget increase will allow for ‘career progression’ but such a small increase will not have any effect in this regard.

No action has been taken to stop pay disparity within MPs’ offices, with some staff on pre-May 2010 contracts paid less than those doing the same or similar jobs on post-May 2010 IPSA contracts where the pay grades have been set higher. The branch argued in our submission that IPSA should have levelled up instead of allowing a two-tier system to continue. We will be seeking further advice on this issue.

IPSA expects us all to take a pay freeze but we’ll be challenging them on this as the say the MP is our employer and can decide our pay within their scales. They say:

When setting pay for their staff, MPs should have regard to the terms of the wider public sector pay freeze. In recognition of this freeze, IPSA does not expect to receive any requests for salary uplifts for MPs’ staff, except where the staff in question has taken on significant extra responsibilities. Under the terms of the public sector pay freeze, public sector workers earning over £21,000 will not receive any increase in salary. Public sector workers earning under this amount will receive an uplift of £250. If MPs wish to provide this £250 uplift from their staffing budget, they should use the salary amendment form on the IPSA website to request it.

Bonuses

Staff are going to be able to be paid some form of bonus – semantically entitled ‘modest reward and recognition vouchers/payments’ by IPSA – thus allowing MPs’ staff to have the same reward system as IPSA staff themselves. The scheme itself refers only to ‘vouchers’, whilst the guidance note refers to ‘payments’ so we will seek clarification as to how this is going to work in practice. However we do know that information about these payments will be published and that “the level of reward and recognition payments is left to the MP’s discretion, but should be modest.”

‘Connected parties’ will be banned from receiving these payments, which will disappoint staff in this circumstance who often work far in excess of their contract hours. The branch proposed an across-the-board performance-related bonus scheme with a cap of 10% of salary of all staff members and full transparency for the public.

We have always argued that bonuses should be allowed, with necessary safeguards, to reflect the fact that staff are often paid below market-rate, work significant amounts of overtime and are unable to take time-off in lieu instead of a bonus payment as this only increases workloads.

Pooled staff resources

Money for pooled staff resources (such as the Parliamentary Resources Unit, Parliamentary Office of the Liberal Democrats or the Parliamentary Research Service) will continue to come out of the staffing budget, but importantly IPSA will also continue to allow payments to come out of the office costs budget if the MP expects their staffing budget will be exhausted

The union branch argued that MPs should have discretion as to which budget funds for pooled staff resources came out of. However we are pleased that IPSA has continued to allow some flexibility, preventing some of the extra strain that would be placed on the staffing budget if this was the only budget from which payments for pooled resources could come.

Contracts

We are pleased that IPSA has heeded the union branch’s advice that all staff contracts should be approved by IPSA. We argued this was the best security against poor employers trying to set worse pay and conditions for their staff. IPSA has decided to no longer require that pay variations should be approved by them.

Redundancies

IPSA have changed the scheme so that costs relating to staff redundancies will come from the Contingency Fund, rather than the Winding Up Budget. We consider this a neutral move – IPSA’s position of downgrading redundancy payments to statutory has not changed.

Maternity/paternity/adoptive/long-term sick leave

After nearly a year of lobbying from the union branch, we finally have cover for maternity/paternity/adoptive/long-term sick leave written into the actual expenses scheme. It will now come from a central IPSA budget, not the contingency budget, and without caveats, as it should always have been.

IPSA has refused to budge on their decision to remove the salary supplement of £8 a day towards the costs of childcare for staff of MPs employed after May 2010. This means the two-tier system between pre-May 2010 staff who continue to receive the supplement, and post-May 2010 staff who are only able to salary sacrifice will be allowed to continue.

Interns

‘Intern’ and ‘volunteer’ expenses will continue to come out the staffing budget, which will allow the current system of exploiting interns who should be paid at least the National Minimum Wage to continue. The union branch argued for a separate interns fund to pay interns the Living Wage or London Living Wage and will continue to do so.

Staff travel

IPSA has replaced the 24 journey per member of staff cap with an overall cap per MP of 96 single journeys for staff members between the MP’s constituency and Westminster. We think this is a broadly neutral change and welcome the extra flexibility.

Security assistance

IPSA has decided to lift the notional cap on security assistance per MP of £2,000. We welcome this move.  As all claims are subject to specialist advice from the police the cap was unnecessary. In their full response IPSA recognises our concern that this facility is not widely known about or understood by MPs and their staff. The branch will be trying to improve knowledge of the security assistance budget amongst branch members and will be requesting IPSA is more pro-active in informing MPs and staff.

What is missing?

Despite saying they intended to allow for trade union subscriptions to be taken at payroll via ‘check off’ – a standard employment procedure – there is no mention in the revised scheme about whether this will be going ahead. We will be seeking urgent clarification on this.

There is no mention of the huge need for a human resources department to deal with staff – despite a survey by the union branch showing that 52% of respondents needed personnel advice or support since the election. We will continue to press for this.

The scheme does not mention giving recognition to the branch nor does it address our concerns with inadequate grievance and disciplinary procedures in their standard contracts.