Ranting Wombat: “Working for free is just plain wrong…unless you’re a journalist”

I have a real beef with the way getting a job in certain industries works.  I’m not talking about the age old problem of “must have 2 years minimum experience to apply” when it’s impossible to get said 2 years due to the fact that no one hires anyone without 2 years minimum experience (deep breath…); although come to think of it, it is kind of related.

No, I’m talking about the fact that some industries are set up in such a way that they exploit workers, pure and simple.  Sounds a bit pinko doesn’t it? Hear me out.

Journalism is one of those fields which, generally speaking, you need to have experience before you get much in the way of paid work; you pretty much definately need a tonne of experience and/or a uni degree to get anything like a fulltime, staff position.  So the only recourse that many aspiring journos - myself included - have is to submit articles everywhere, and take any opportunity to be published.  There’s actually a bit of coolness in writing for a start up website or an underground magazine, and this negates the fact that you aren’t being paid.  Besides, it’s entirely possible in this field to work fulltime at something else entirely while working when you can, hoping to make the big change to professional journo.

Not every industry is like this though.  I’m not going to name names here, but one that I’ve been finding a great deal out about during the last couple of years is the Zoo industry; specifically the fact that, by and large, every zoo, wildlife park, aquarium, and anything else involving a few animals in a cage, is built almost entirely on the backs of volunteer labour, most of whom work their arses off doing disgusting, intense phsyical labour, and most of whom will never actually be offered paid employment.

It’s just absurd; these poor bastards do courses at TAFE or Uni and volunteer to get work at anywhere they can in the miniscule hope that they might actually gain a paid casual position which pays somewhat lower than what the trolley boy at Coles earns. Unlike mysef, who has the freedom to spend his days doing something menial to support his nights churning out 5-star articles (let me dream), these people will work 20-30 hour weeks for absolutely nothing beyond the experience and the love of an industry that wants nothing more than to exploit them until they are bitter shells.

Am I the only person that finds something fundamentally wrong with this?  I don’t care if your wildlife park barely breaks even, and I don’t care if your aquarium has fake fish because you can’t afford real ones; if someone comes down to work for you for 10 hours a day raking shit and feeding your Mexican Humping Toads, the least you can do is give them petrol money and a free lunch!

Volunteer work should be something entered into for charity or self-fulfillment; not because you want to work in an industry that is perfectly content taking advantage of you and others like you.  Unpaid internships, traineeships, cadetships, or anything else are just blatantly unfair.  Everyone has the right to earn enough to at least eat every second day, and it is disgraceful that this kind of situation is even allowed to exist in the first place, nevermind actively encouraged.

The problem is of course, how do you stop it?  Most TV and Radio journalism is built on this kind of thing, with cadetships offering minimum-to-no pay for upto 2 years; many newspapers and whatnot are the same.  As talked about above, the zoo industry is pretty much founded on the exploitation of people that love animals; and I’m sure there are numerous other occupations which are much the same (particularly in the arts I would imagine).  Why, I wonder, isn’t there something like the apprenticeship programs available for industries like these? $7.50 an hour might not sound like much; but throw in free TAFE and some petrol money, and I guarantee there would be a great many more happy journalist cadets and apprentice zoo keepers in this country.

And at the end of the day, don’t we want everyone to have a “fair go” at life, and doesn’t that include actually being able to support yourself with your chosen career?  Last I checked, despite being a bit of a cliche these days, a fair go is still what Australia is supposed to be all about.

Viva la revolution!

    

- The Evil Wombat

Nutting out some more deals to get published

Hey gang,

Not much of an update, but I just wanted to let everyone know that I’ve almost sorted a couple more online publishing deals for my articles; it’s not paid work (when is it?), but it’s a way of getting my stuff out there and developing a name for myself, so it has to be done.  Besides, I wouldn’t commit to writing anything for anyone that wasn’t at least a little bit cool, so no need to worry about selling out when there isn’t cash involved!

I’m still waiting to hear back on when some of my articles are going to be published in a certain magazine; it still has to be hush hush, but apparently it’s going to happen.  The Escapist (home of Zero Punctuation) is currently looking over an article proposal of mine, and I’m going to be submitting a couple more proposals in the next few days.

So I guess this might just be a long winded way of apologising for the single review a day that’s been happening lately; I’m so busy with so many different projects that I can’t write a tonne of things for the site every day.  I’ll still get stuff done though, rest assured.

Keep on reading, and feel free to tell your friends…especially if your friends run magazines or websites ;)

Cheers,

  

-Tim ‘will drop pants for money’ Sweeney