The state administration of Schleswig-Holstein regularly recruits interns for ‘modern workplaces’, allowing young professionals to gain necessary experience. However, almost everyone who, just for the sake of it or in the hope of finding a permanent job, takes up a temporary position in any of the ministries of the northern federal state will have to forgo compensation for their work, even symbolic.
Thus, in the State Office for Administrative Affairs, fifteen interns worked in recent months, six of them with a higher education degree. The unpaid internship, which lasted up to four months, involved no compensation. In the Ministry of the Interior of Schleswig-Holstein, several people completed a free four-month internship in 2013; the ministries of economics, employment, transport, and technology offer unpaid internships lasting 12 weeks.
The state government provided this information in response to a request from Landtag deputy Patrick Breyer of the Pirate Party. The parliamentarian considers such offers from ministries ‘a terrible example of the perversion of the very idea of internships by the highest state administrative bodies’. To Breyer's question whether internships in state institutions should provide for time limits or minimum compensation, the state government gives an evasive answer: the specific conditions depend heavily on the purposes of the internship and are linked to educational regulations for its organization. The authorities see no need for additional regulation of the recruitment of interns, nor for regulations on paying them: usually, compensation for such employment corresponds to that established by state collective agreements. The ministries of Schleswig-Holstein take on no additional obligations; fundamentally, compensation for interns is not provided for by state agreements.
The Landtag of Schleswig-Holstein is far from the only one that holds the opinion that interns should work for free. In the Bundestag, they also work – or rather, gain experience – without any compensation, as do the state parliaments in ten of the sixteen German federal states. According to 2013 data, besides Schleswig-Holstein, temporary employees were not paid in the Landtags of Lower Saxony, Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse, Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
Many federal ministries also do without compensation or allowances for their interns. In 2012, 4,700 young people completed internships in 14 federal ministries and subordinate agencies. Eight ministries paid their interns about 300 euros per month; the rest did not pay a cent.
A simple trick allows cost-saving agencies to refuse payment to interns. Back in November 2011, on the initiative of the Ministry of the Interior, a document entitled ‘Internship Guidelines at Federal Level’ (Praktikantenrichtlinie Bund) was developed. According to the Interior Ministry, representatives of all ministries worked on it. The new 2012 version contains a clear wording: ‘Interns – school pupils, vocational school students, and university students – are to be paid at least 300 euros per month’.
However, this commandment applies only to those who plan to complete an internship in ministries and agencies voluntarily. For those who must complete a mandatory internship – most often required to start or continue their studies – scholarships or parental support suffice: in the opinion of most ministers and parliamentarians, such interns need not be paid.
Pyotr LEVSKY.
«Russkaya Germaniya»