“Time to walk the walk,” She Tweeted…. “Very few members of Congress actually pay their interns. We will be one of them.”
I was not aware that so many interns were not paid. A study by Pay Our Interns last year found that only 3.6 percent of interns for House Democrats were paid, while 8 percent of interns for House Republicans were compensated for their work.
I recall back in the Clinton years when Zoe Baird was nominated to become the Attorney General of the United States, but she withdrew her nomination when it was discovered she had hired undocumented immigrants and failed to pay taxes.
What was not emphasized at that time was that Zoe and her husband were making $650K a year (or about $156.25 per hour each) and they saw fit to pay their workers $6.25 per hour. Democrats should have been outraged at that more so than hiring undocumented people or not paying taxes.
Ocasio-Cortez knows what it’s like to be poor and working full time, something that so many in Washington and Beacon Hill haven’t the slightest idea about. Even here in “Blue” Mass, our state legislators voted (rightly so) to increase the wages of those making $30-35K a year by raising the state’s minimum wage, but they funded this increase in part by cutting the wages of many who currently make $40-55K a year. Of course our same legislators voted to give themselves a raise (again, rightly so) but somehow, did not need to cut the wages of others to fund their increase. Imagine that?
We need more people like Ocasio-Cortez in the Massachusetts house and senate and in the US house and senate.
Interns should be either paid or get college credit, though volunteering isn’t the worst thing in the world. I interned on both sides of the Capitol without pay or credit and it was a great experience.
Internships like that are mostly illegal, but rarely enforced. It’s unpaid labor. Internships that are legally allowed to be unpaid are very rare.
You’re doing work, you should get paid fairly, it shouldn’t be hard. And Congress certainly has plenty of money.
Unpaid internships like this do help those in certain classes get access to opportunities that people who need to make money to survive do not have access to. That’s one reason why many DC political jobs of all types are full of upper and upper middle class folks often working on behalf of their class interests.
I suppose, but taken to its logical extreme you’ve basically made volunteering illegal.
Abolishing slavery,carried to its logical extreme would prevent volunteer cotton picking.
The difference of course being that volunteering has two definitions while slaves didn’t have a choice.
Ocasio-Cortez is the most exciting person to hit Congress in a very long time. I think she’s part of the generational change we need.
Good post.