Internships and the minimum wage - AGCAS consulted
The government is currently updating its guidance on work experience, internships and the national minimum wage. This is to ensure that employers and individuals are clear about their rights and responsibilities with regards to internships and other forms of work experience, and follows a suggestion in the 2010 Low Pay Commission report. AGCAS has been invited to comment on the drafts of guidance aimed at employers and workers/interns, and on the appropriateness of case studies. We would be grateful therefore if AGCAS services could send any comments and responses to Margaret Dane and Chris Jackson so that AGCAS can make sure it represents the views of its members to government, the media, employers and others on this topic.
The message to AGCAS and other relevant bodies reads:
Ministers have agreed to maintain the current legislative framework which allows for both paid and unpaid internships, whilst raising awareness about the law as it applies to internships. The guidance aims to support the recently published Social Mobility Strategy's call for greater transparency around internships.
Your comments on the guidance
Before this guidance is finalised and published we would be grateful for your comments on the content of the attached draft. Ministers have agreed the policy position as described above, and it would be very helpful to hear from you whether the guidance sets this out in a way that is clear and helpful. As you will appreciate we may not be able to take all comments into account but we will use as many as possible to further improve the guidance before publication. Particular points you may wish to consider are:
1. Please identify any sections where the drafting is unclear or confusing. In what ways could these sections be updated to be more helpful to an employer and an individual wanting to find out about their rights and responsibilities?
2. Is the guidance appropriately balanced between paid and unpaid internships, which can both be legal within the legislative framework?
3. The case studies are intended to clarify some of the most common factors that might cause uncertainty about an individual on work experience's entitlement to the minimum wage. Are these examples clear and do they cover the most important points? Are there any additional examples that should be added, or given that there will be a word limit on the examples, are there any that are not needed and could be removed?
What is attached
There are three separate pieces of guidance attached:
1. Guidance for Business Link, where the target audience is employers offering or considering offering work experience.
2. Guidance for Direct Gov, where the target audience is individuals undertaking or considering undertaking work experience. The Direct Gov guidance is written in a style so as to be accessible to a broad audience.
3. Case studies intended to clarify some of the most common factors that might cause uncertainty about an individual on work experience's entitlement to the minimum wage. These case studies contain a high proportion based in the creative industries to meet our commitment to providing sector specific examples for the entertainment sector, following a suggestion in the 2010 Low Pay commission report. A selection of the case studies will be used in the Business Link and Direct Gov guidance.
The Business Link and Direct Gov guidance are each split into two sections:
1. Guide on the payment of those undertaking work experience, including interns.
2. Factsheet giving more detail on the meaning of a worker for minimum wage purposes. This should be read in conjunction with the work experience guide as it gives more detail on the meaning of a worker for minimum wage purposes.
-
Consultation on internships and minumum wage downloads
- Guidance for employers (Locked)
- Guidance for individuals (Locked)
- Case studies (Locked)
If items are locked please check that you are registered and signed in to ensure that you can see all parts of the site to which you have been given access.
Tags: minimum wage national minimum wage internships unpaid internships
Created on: 26 April 2011
Last updated: 27 April 2011