Interns

Internships are becoming more and more common. They are a way of gaining experience within large industries and give the opportunity of employment after internships have ended. However, the law governing internships is complex and weighted against the intern.

Intern Rights

Nearly all workers in the UK have some basic employment rights, including the right to a safe working environment, data protection rights, protection against discrimination, and the right to join a union.

But most employment rights depend on your employment status. Different people might be deemed an ‘employee‘, a ‘worker‘, a ‘voluntary worker‘, or a ‘trainee’ as defined by different pieces of employment law. This applies to interns as much as any other type of worker.

As an intern, provided you are doing some work of value for the employer, you are likely to have rights to:

• Be paid at least the national minimum wage,
• Paid holidays and
• Protection from excessive working hours.
• Not be discriminated against at work.

If you do regular paid work for your employer you may also qualify as an “employee“. If so, you will benefit from a much wider range of employments rights, including unfair dismissal and redundancy rights and family friendly rights. But it is important to note that if you are only work-shadowing during your internship, you may only have limited employment rights.

Some employers think that because someone is an intern they have no employment rights. But an employer can not deprive you of your rights merely by describing you as an intern.

So it does not matter how your role is described or how the post was advertised.

Your rights as an intern will depend on what happens in practice in the workplace, who decides what you do and what you are expected to do by your employer.

Payment of Interns:

Most people who are over the compulsory school age and working legally in the UK should be paid at least the national minimum wage.

In order to be eligible for the national minimum wage you have to be meet two tests:

• You must be a “worker” – as defined in national minimum wage, paid holidays and working time law.
• You must not fall into one of the exemptions from the national minimum wage.

If your internship only involves work shadowing, you may not have a right to be paid. But if, as an intern, you do work of value for the employer you are likely to have a right to the national minimum wage. In particular, this will be the case if your employer agrees to pay you expenses or other benefits in kind, including training, in return for your work.