Employers are exploiting interns by making them do unpaid work and taking advantage of them by forcing them to do menial, irrelevant tasks, a Trades Union Congress report has claimed.
One third of people on an internship are not getting paid even though the number of placements has increased recently, the TUC has said.
One university graduate said she was made to spend an evening squeezing fruit juice for a cocktail party and had to organise her boss's holidays. He even made her buy him food.
Bosses have a 'slave-driver' attitude to internships, one person said, who added that despite this he was still compelled to continue working for no wage because he wanted to gain experience and learn new things.
The TUC said employers are exploiting the desperation many graduates are feeling because of the lack of jobs and think of interns as free labour.
Almost eight in 10 members of the National Union of Journalists who are on work experience and have had work published are paid nothing for it and broadcast union Bectu said unpaid work in the film and TV industry is "rife".
A third of the 6,000 internships on the Government's Graduate Talent Pool website receive no wages.
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: "Whether they are unscrupulous or genuinely unaware of the rules, too many employers are ripping off talented young people by employing them in unpaid internships that are not only unfair but, in most cases, probably illegal. It is vital that we crack down on those internships that offer little but hard graft for no reward. Employers need to know that there's no such thing as free labour."
