Student Slavery? Or Corporate Kindness?

Unless you know someone who knows someone who knows someone, the ‘placement’ is a core part of breaking into the publishing industry.

Many publishing houses have throngs of students fitting into their fixed work placement roles all year round. Or in other words, at any given time you can walk into a publishing firms office and find at least one person who is working for FREE.

I’ve coordinated teams of voluntary workforce in the past, and they’ve been crucial to the projects that they were involved in. During my own placement hunt this week I was infuriated, at first, to see that some offices endorse up to half a year’s free labour from work hungry students who are hoping for a job opportunity.

Surely allowing this industry to employ a student slave for 6 months (while paying only for the odd tube journey) is deplorable? Or is it?

The placement is a two-way trip. For the publisher they are inviting an unskilled person into their team who might make mistakes. For the work-experience-seeker they are gaining valuable experience.

But lets not underestimate the skill of the volunteer. Just because they’re working for free doesn’t mean they might not be excellent. Yet the Hokey Cokey of short placements does mean that just as a candidate settles in, they’re off out the door and in comes the new one. So longer unpaid placements might be good for standards.

But even with two-week stints, if you offset the time spent on supporting those on work placement with the yearly productivity they offer to a firm, it’s clearly worth it. And let’s face it; if it wasn’t worth it for those who are nursing the bottom line, placements wouldn’t exist at all.

My fury at these lengthy placements quickly turned to passivity. I went from thinking ‘how dare they expect so much time’ to fantasising about ‘… the opportunity it might offer’.

The corporate kindness of the publishers, to offer a window of hands on learning, is gold dust to the student. I’m still left wondering if we students are happy to work for free for this long because it’s the only way in? Or because of the self-development the opportunity itself offers?

Perhaps it’s both.

And I’m torn between the immoral aspects of expecting free work for so long (not to mention cutting out those who can’t afford to do this) and the individual value that these placements offer students, who are in the business of deciding where they see themselves within the industry.