Should interns be paid regular rate, not be paid, be paid half the rate, or other? See detail?

For exampe, if someone were to do an internship at our company, and we do architectural visualisation, they would only in the beginning be learning the basics of our programs and workflows on fictitious projects.
After that they would be working and learning on actual projects for real clients, as simple or low priority they may be, they would still be generating income for the company by doing so.
So of course they should be paid.

So, they should get paid the same as someone who finished their internship and has been waiting for the first raise?

The interns usually only work 4 days and less than 8 hours a day, so no.

@raginglo In my detail I ask full or ¼ or ½ or other?

Let us go with 75.036%

From my understanding, in our industry, it’s for college credits only.

I don’t like that they have to pay for college credits and also then get minimal pay or no pay.

@jca2 To be honest, they don’t really ‘work’, or what I call work. They are to learn about the industry, and since they aren’t paid, only a few things are allowed. Plus they don’t have any experience in the real work aspect of things. So I think it’s very fair personally.

I gave you a GA by accident, @KNOWITALL.

From what I know, and what I did as an intern, they do and I did work that was like entry level work. As an intern in a public archive, I indexed and prepared collections for permanent storage in the archives. I answered the phones. I made copies. I helped the public with their research. That’s entry level and typical of what others do at companies and corporations.

@jca2 I’m suspect of any GA’s and I hate lurve, so no worries.

Things changed about ten years ago in my area. They now limit intern work due to people like you being overworked as unpaid interns. The laws here are strict now.

@KNOWITALl what does the law say?

@flo I’d have to look it up. But we no longer participate in the program, no benefit.

Ok @KNOWITALL I was rushing re. your username.

I can’t complain, though. That was in 1992, I got hired part time ion 1993, full time in 1996 and have been with the same employer ever since. It worked out well for me.

Definitely they should be paid. If they work for free, then people with money again have a large advantage over families that don’t. If a student has to work to pay for their education then they can’t do an internship. Kids like me, where my parents paid for my education, I could have done whatever I want (I wish I had taken advantage of that) to increase my experience and resume.

Moreover, well established companies with a lot of presence wind up getting the best free labor, again putting the people (or company in this case) with an advantage over the small businesses, which gives them a competitive advantage in cost of goods sold, in turn giving them a pricing advantage selling their product or service.

I’m fine with paying interns less, because training them takes time, but I’d go with paying them about 75% of what someone gets paid in the job they do, or the lowest amount in that pay band put forth by the compensation rules in the company. Usually, a company has a range for a job. A CAD designer might make anywhere from $15—$25 an hour at the company, so the interns would make $15.

If the intern is working in marketing, but their basic job is administrative, they should be paid similar to an admin, even though they are really interning to learn about the marketing job of someone higher up.

Edit: I wanted to add that even though I could have worked fir free as a student, I feel pretty sure I would have felt taken advantage of doing it. I’m guessing within a month’s time I would be fed up.