[kictanet] [labor issues] why Kenya should urgently BAN unpaid internships

Thu Apr 4 16:35:07 EAT 2019

Patrick

Hapo sawa kaka!

*Ali Hussein*

*Principal*

*AHK & Associates*

Tel: +254 713 601113

Twitter: @AliHKassim

Skype: abu-jomo

LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim
<http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim>

13th Floor , Delta Towers, Oracle Wing,

Chiromo Road, Westlands,

Nairobi, Kenya.

Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely
mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the
organizations that I work with.

On Wed, Apr 3, 2019 at 3:13 PM Patrick A. M. Maina <pmaina2000 at yahoo.com>
wrote:

> Many thanks for your thoughts Ali.
>
> Indeed, words in most languages can have multiple, totally unrelated,
> meanings (e.g. "saw" the noun/hardware, "saw" the verb/cutting, and "saw"
> the past tense of "see"... or in Swahili "paka" the cat vs "paka" as in to
> paint) so in this case the appropriate focus would be on the
> vocation-oriented definition of "intern" (though I can see material for
> contextual innuendo in the two meanings hehe).
>
> Some well known intellectuals on twitter are getting stuck on written
> definitions and relying on logical fallacies which is not intellectually
> sincere. Are definitions cast in stone? Can they have a shelf-life? Don't
> they change with time?
>
> Fact: Definitions only document meaning as it evolves over time; they are
> not the source of meaning. The general rule of thumb is that Informality
> precedes formality.
>
> Thankfully the etymology (origin of a word and the historical development
> of its meaning) of "intern" shows that the meaning and usage, in
> professional context, has indeed been evolving.
>
> According to an online source (link below), the term is believed to have
> been documented as a noun circa 1879 for the teaching and medical
> professions, and then extended to other profesions around 1963. It was
> formally recognize as a verb circa 1933 within the medical field.
>
> Prior to that, and going back as far as medieval times (in western
> cultures), people learned through apprenticeships and although you did not
> get "paid" in the narrow sense of the term, your boss provided you with
> free *accommodation* and *food*. Such contextual nuances around the
> apprenticeship system are (conveniently) ignored by advocates of unpaid
> internships.
>
> In African culture (link below), apprenticeship was a very POSITIVE
> community experience. People had EMPATHY for one another and collective
> gains were favored over individual gains. Not caring whether someone had
> food or a safe place to sleep was unheard of. Lets face it, cold blooded,
> greed motivated exploitation of the youth within a community is an alien
> concept in most (if not all) of pre-colonial Africa.
>
> In traditional China and (I believe) India the apprentice is technically
> "adopted" and the relationship is parent - child, but in vocational
> context. There is mutual love, concern and caring even if the apprentice is
> treated harshly. It never crosses over to predation.
>
> We are Africans. Unless we want to give up our core identity, the quest
> for meaning in everything we do (and the policies we support) has to be
> done within the context of our Africanness. Even as we adopt poitive
> aspects of foreign cultures in a cosmopolitan world, we can strive to
> retain the best aspects of our indigenous cultures. For example if the
> industrialized world had emulated positive African philosophies like simple
> contented living in harmony with nature, we would not have existential
> problems like climate change, WMDs, world wars, economic inequality and so
> on.
>
> Imported meanings are not rules cast in stone. We can, if we want to,
> define our own modern, African, definition of the word "intern" in a way
> that that protects our youth from abuse and exploitation.
>
> The youth are our children and our future. Let us not raise a generation
> of bitter, angry and resentful people. It's not a smart thing to do.
>
> Thanks & have a great day!
>
> Patrick.
>
> Patrick A. M. Maina
> [Cross Domain Innovator | Independent Public Policy Analyst - Indigenous
> Innovations]
>
> Links:
>
> 1. Etymology of the word "intern":
> https://www.etymonline.com/word/intern
>
> 2. Traditional apprenticeship in Africa
>
> https://www.academia.edu/11682853/Revisiting_the_role_of_traditional_apprenticeship_in_traditional_Africa_vocational_pedagogy
>
> 3. Weird history of internship
>
> https://www.businessinsider.com/the-weird-history-of-how-internships-came-to-be-2016-
>
>
>
>
> On Wednesday, April 3, 2019, 9:01:10 AM GMT+3, Ali Hussein <
> ali at hussein.me.ke> wrote:
>
>
> Patrick
>
> The great debate happening online on this issue is missing a fundamental
> component of this narrative. That the whole concept of being an Intern has
> been lost in translation. Fundamentally what is an intern?
>
> Depending on where you sit here are two definitions:-
>
>
>    1. 1.
>    a student or trainee who works, sometimes without pay, in order to
>    gain work experience or satisfy requirements for a qualification.
>    synonyms: trainee, apprentice, probationer, student, novice, learner,
>    beginner;
>    person doing work experience
>    "he worked as an intern for a local magazine"
>    -
>
> *verb*
>
>    1. 2. Confine (someone) as a prisoner, especially for political or
>    military reasons.
>    "the family were interned for the duration of the war as enemy aliens"
>    synonyms: imprison, incarcerate, impound, jail, put in jail, put
>    behind bars, detain, take into custody, hold in custody, hold captive,
>    hold, lock up, keep under lock and key, confine; More
>
>
>
> S0 based on the two above which one do we think most fits the situation
> today? :-) And what do we need to do to restore the Institution that
> arguably can produce the best associates in any organization.
>
>
> I leave it here for us to discuss and decide.
>
>
> Regards
>
>
> *Ali Hussein*
>
> *Principal*
>
> *AHK & Associates*
>
>
>
> Tel: +254 713 601113
>
> Twitter: @AliHKassim
>
> Skype: abu-jomo
>
> LinkedIn: http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim
> <http://ke.linkedin.com/in/alihkassim>
>
>
> 13th Floor , Delta Towers, Oracle Wing,
>
> Chiromo Road, Westlands,
>
> Nairobi, Kenya.
>
> Any information of a personal nature expressed in this email are purely
> mine and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the
> organizations that I work with.
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 3, 2019 at 1:07 AM Patrick A. M. Maina via kictanet <
> kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:
>
> Greetings Listers,
>
> There is a (misplaced) belief that unpaid internships are a "win-win"
> because they incentivize employers to create opportunities (and incur
> potentially unrecoverable costs) for on-the-job training of fresh
> graduates, who would otherwise not have a real-world platform for gaining
> experience.
>
> The argument often posited in support of unpaid internships is that the
> intern has more to gain, as it is unlikely that a fresh graduate will
> create more value for the employer than s/he draws from the internship.
> Further, it is assumed that once they have some real world experience, the
> graduates will have better chance at getting a paid job elsewhere.
>
> *Here's the problem with that kind of thinking:*
>
> *1. Phantom Jobs Paradox: *A 3 month internship most likely involves
> entry level assignments with very limited bounds of autonomy or direct
> commercial impact (e.g. Web Dev, Gathering & Compiling, Graphics design,
> User support, Customer Service, Reception, Office admin, Project Assistants
> etc). Now, given the rigid way that the labor markets work, in order for a
> candidate to realistically leverage the experience earned during
> internship, s/he will have to apply for a paid job that is very similar to
> what s/he did during the internship.. but wait... *those are the exact
> same jobs being offered to unpaid interns - so the ex-intern is locked-out
> and remains jobless because no paid jobs exist for the experience s/he
> gained while working for free!*
>
> Why would a rational employer - whose goal is to maximize margins (within
> a very difficult / hostile business environment) - be interested in paying
> an experienced ex-intern, when they can simply get a fresh unpaid intern
> for free, train them within hours or a couple of days, even as other
> unpaids hold the temporary slack? This where we are headed - if not there
> already. The youth are "working" but they are still technically unemployed
> because *they are not earning a living.*
>
> The unintended consequence here is that employers have figured out (as
> they were bound to) that they can use unpaid interns to profit from free
> labor (with the "bonus" of dodging "headaches" like PAYE, NSSF, NHIF and Px
> filing), and this is incentivizing them to keep rotating unpaid interns -
> in perpetuity. It is even worse if Government subsidizes the stipend -
> creating an artificial band-aid relief that does not add sustainable value.
> Friends, that is not job creation.
>
> The risk here is that these policies are creating a growing, frustrated,
> resentful (and increasingly angry) pool of young, unemployed former interns
> - who feel used, and don't understand why their "investment" in work
> experience did not pay-off with a real job, as society had "promised". This
> is already being voiced on twitter (link below - #payinterns).
>
> While attempting to solve the youth-unemployment problem, in good faith,
> policy makers could be unintentionally creating a *simmering political
> time bomb*. Something to think about and address (urgently).
>
>
> *2. Sub-optimization problem: *As stated in my article on Modernizing
> Tertiary Education, we have an obsolete education system which churns out
> graduates without taking ownership for jobs creation (comfortable in the
> outdated, buck-passing silo culture that believes jobs creation is someone
> else's i.e. private sector or government, problem / responsibility).
>
>
> *3. Demand vs Supply: *The unpaid internship model requires a high-growth
> economy, which must create a greater demand for jobs each year than the
> available pool of candidates (>approx 800,000 - 1 Million *new *real*
> vacancies for paid jobs annually*). This incentivizes companies to
> compete for the experienced candidates. The fastest way to do this is to
> create a rapid growth environment for MSMEs and startups. But the approach
> should be intelligent and evidence driven.
>
> Data driven evidence (from the US, see link below - but relevant locally -
> which can be confirmed by analyzing performance of local youth
> entrepreneurship programs) shows *that the older generation (age 36 - 69)
> are the best targets for MSME stimulus initiatives*, with higher chances
> of sustainable success, whereas ages 18-29 have the worst rate of startup
> failures - which makes sense, *because experience truly counts in
> business and - the learning curve in business is super-steep*(!).
>
> Data clearly shows that it is wasteful to throw money at the youth when
> they don't have the skills to manage / multiply it; the grit to persevere;
> and broad experience to draw on - and these are not skills that can be
> taught in an entrepreneurship class.
>
> The smarter way is for Government to encourage *experienced* older
> founders to start businesses and get government funding + growth support on
> condition that they* hire our youth for high quality paid apprenticeships*.
> The minimum headcount and/or salaries can even be set by Government for
> those who receive funding. This should happen within a designed ecosystem
> framework (interested policy makers are welcome to contact me for more
> details on how to go about this).
>
> From a root-cause perspective, what is lacking in youth-oriented programs
> is *strategic design for sustainability*. We need to move from NGO-style
> interventionist paradigms to evidence driven master-plan design paradigms.
> Youth-targeting programs should be compulsorily derived from the
> master-plan (Vision 2030 / Big 4) and have precise, meaningful and
> measurable traceability back to the master-plan, in terms of real
> contributions towards getting the country closer to the vision.
>
> The end game must be clear - what does the 2030 economy look like (e.g. in
> measurable terms such as % unemployment, median wage, GDP, sector
> contribution, Stock Markets, balance of trade etc)? Or will we just wake
> up in 2030 and find everything has magically fallen into place? How do we
> know where we are right now in terms of Vision 2030 overall (and this is
> not about project status but macro-level metrics)? Are we 10% there? 60%?
> 30%? How do we know the status is reliable (e.g. can things be seen, is
> there data, and does on-the-ground sentiment reflect it)? What is working?
> What is not? What are the lessons so far? How will we know we have arrived
> (e.g. if we get there early)? How do we know if we are off course? Is there
> a *data driven* *dashboard *tracking Vision 2030?
>
>
> *Here's a quick recap of problems with unpaid internships:*
>
> 1. It encourages exploitation of young people as free labor;
> 2. Creates a loophole for companies to dodge PAYE for certain types of
> jobs;
> 3. It creates phantom jobs - busy young people who are technically
> unemployed (not earning a living);
> 4. It unfairly locks out the poor. Those who can't afford to work for free
> (where do they get fare? or food?);
> 5. Increases political risks by creating a pool of angry, disillusioned
> youth;
> 6. It is evidence of poor economic policies (interventionist instead of
> evidence driven master-plan design).
>
> Brgds,
> Patrick
>
> Patrick A. M. Maina
> [Cross Domain Innovator | Independent Public Policy Analyst - Indigenous
> Innovations]
>
> *Links:*
>
> 1. European Parliament bans Unpaid Internships
>
> https://www.neweurope.eu/article/european-parliament-bans-unpaid-internships/
>
> 2. Older entrepreneurs more likely to succeed:
>
> https://www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2018/08/05/proof-that-the-most-successful-entrepreneurs-are-older-ones/#762ed9e742dd
>
> 3. Does Kenya's Youth Enterprise Development Fund Serve Young People
> (Maurice Sikenyi)
> https://bulletin.ids.ac.uk/idsbo/article/view/2874/ONLINE%20ARTICLE
>
> 4. Worrying trend of gambling youth + 500,000 in CRB blacklist
>
> https://sokodirectory.com/2019/04/76-of-kenyan-youth-are-gamblers-500000-blacklisted-on-crb-a-time-to-worry/
>
> 5. Why youth and women enterprises fail in Africa (Prof Michael Chege)
>
> https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/business/Why-youth-and-women-enterprises-fail-in-Africa/2560-3977712-ujiwftz/index.html
>
> 6. Hashtag Payinterns (Kenya) on Twitter
> https://twitter.com/hashtag/payinterns?src=hash
>
>
>
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