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Forget unpaid internships, some paid jobs also show privilege
Is there such a thing as paid jobs for privileged people? Turns out there are some. But are the people doing them really "privileged"?
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Come to think of it, I get by because I do not have to financially support my family. I never feel the pressure to climb up the career ladder and move somewhere else for a better living. (Shutterstock/File)
W
hat's a weekend in Indonesia without at least one raging debate on Twitter? This time, netizens debated unpaid internships and at the center of it was Gustika Jusuf-Hatta, the granddaughter of the country's founding father Mohammad Hatta.
It began with a tweet by United States politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), who called for all internships to be paid. Gustika retweeted and commented that she disagreed with AOC.
This time I have to disagree with AOC. It's not that simple.
Sometimes we pursue unpaid internships for the experience exactly, networking, and more. Although if it's a for-profit organisation or company, they definitely should pay their interns. https://t.co/mZhHFyCWuu
— Gustika 🌜 (@Gustika) July 26, 2019
"Sometimes we pursue unpaid internships for the experience exactly, networking and more. Although if it's a for-profit organization or company, they definitely should pay their interns," she wrote in a tweet. Then, she spoke about her personal experience interning at a non-profit organization at which she was not getting paid.
Further, she argued that the merit of an internship was in the experience and that anyone whose reason for getting an internship was to get paid enough to pay their bills was "misguided".
