TRINITY NEWS
17th September 2013
www.trinitynews.ie
NEWSPAPER OF THE YEAR 2013
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Alleged systematic exploitation of unpaid interns by German Department SIPTU condemns use of unpaid interns as “gross exploitation” 10-year-long scheme sees German students work up to “12 hours every day” Prof. Moray McGowan, Head of Department, responds
T Catherine Healy News Editor
he Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union (SIPTU) has condemned as “gross exploitation” the use of unpaid interns by third-level institutions in Ireland. The comment follows revelations surrounding the responsibilities of unpaid German interns at the Department of Germanic Studies at Trinity College, Dublin. Speaking to Trinity News, Louise O’Reilly, SIPTU Education Sector organiser, said, “We’re not against internships. They’re often a valuable learning experience, but when you’re doing work that would ordinarily be paid, and replacing paid work, that’s unacceptable.” She made the statement in relation to information acquired by this paper about the working conditions of German students who are recruited each year to teach at the Department. Having interviewed a number of former interns, none of whom wish to be named, Trinity News has learned that unpaid German students teach a significant number of the compulsory language classes taken weekly by Junior and Senior Freshman students in the Department. These classes are all largely taught independently by unpaid interns, and have sometimes involved them correcting students’ homework.
Interns also take weekly tutorial groups for a module in cultural studies, and have covered for absent lecturers on a number of occasions in the past. The internship programme in question has been in operation for ten years, and is advertised online by the Department. However, the Department’s webpage specifies that the conversation lessons taught by interns are done so “unter Anleitung” (under guidance). In a statement to Trinity News, Professor Moray McGowan, head of the Department of Germanic Studies, said, “Interns teach conversation classes in spoken German which are a supplement to the structured instruction in German language provided by more senior and qualified staff. They are supervised in this by the staff who teach the language classes.” However, the first former intern who spoke to this reporter about her experience at the Department, while stressing that the group had supervisors who “always found the time to discuss our teaching experience and also sat in on some of our classes”, said they “relied on us to prepare and perform the teaching independently”. Professor McGowan’s claim is also at odds with comments provided by current
students at the Department of Germanic Studies. Speaking to this reporter, a Senior Sophister European Studies student recounted his experience of German language classes in first and second year in less than complimentary terms. He said, “Our classes were taken every week by people who were essentially teaching their peers. I didn’t learn a lot from them. They were chaotic and not very challenging. I don’t think they really knew what they were supposed to be doing.” When asked to describe the profile of language teachers he encountered teaching these language classes, he claimed that, “Most of them would’ve been about twentytwo or twenty-three.” Another final year student, who took oral German as part of his TSM degree with the Department in Junior and Senior Freshman years, told Trinity News, “From what I remember of them, they were very, very informal. To be honest, I stopped going during second year, as I didn’t really feel they were worth the time… The impression I got was that [the tutors] were young, native speakers, possibly doing a postgrad in Trinity, and doing this on the side to earn some money. They just ran through some very basic exercises with us in class that were more akin to material you’d cover when
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We’re not against internships. They’re often a valuable learning experience, but when you’re doing work that would ordinarily be paid, and replacing paid work, that’s unacceptable. SIPTU Education Sector Organiser Louise O’Reilly
learning a language in secondary school.” The interns taken on every year, according to Professor McGowan, are either students of German or of English studying for a Master’s degree, or teachers of German as a foreign language. They are not interviewed by the Department, and are instead selected on the merits of a CV to work for periods of one term up to an entire academic year in college. In addition to language classes, interns at the Department of Germanic Studies are regularly tasked with organising extracurricular activities, such as film screenings, and “Stammtisch” nights, the informal pub gatherings which are a tradition of the Department. During the Christmas period, interns often bake with students. One of the most significant responsibilities entrusted to unpaid interns took place in 2011, when they ran the theatre group, which is a key component of first year and involves weekly practice sessions, largely without any assistance from the Department. The lecturer whose role it was to lead the class, according to an intern who worked in Trinity College for one term that year, was on sick leave for over a month, which resulted in interns taking over as directors.
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