Flare, Chatelaine axe their unpaid internship programs
Posted April 4, 2014 4:43 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Unpaid interns could soon be a thing of the past after two more prominent Canadian magazines ended their programs in the midst of an Ontario government crackdown.
Rogers-owned Flare and Chatelaine terminated their interns earlier this week.
Flare didn’t pay their stable of interns, while those at Chatelaine were given a $400 monthly stipend that amounted to an hourly pay rate well below Ontario’s minimum wage.
The move by Rogers Media came after Ontario’s crackdown resulted in the shuttering of two other magazine internship programs at Toronto Life and The Walrus.
Louise Leger, a spokeswoman for Rogers Media, says the company’s internship programs will either be paid positions or associated with an educational institution from now on.
New Democrat MP Andrew Cash is pushing the federal Conservative government to crack down on unpaid internships, particularly among big, profitable companies.
Last week, the federal finance committee held a hearing into youth employment that focused on unpaid internships.
A number of witnesses urged Ottawa to better monitor unpaid internships and crack down on abusers if it’s truly serious about tackling youth unemployment. At almost 14 per cent, youth joblessness is almost twice the national rate.
They also say unpaid interns are not covered by federal workplace health and safety measures, leaving them unprotected in the event of on-the-job accidents.
Rogers Media is the parent company of City, CityNews and CityNews.ca.
