Ministry of Labour cracks down on unpaid magazine internships

“This means that, pending any appeal, the workers involved have to be paid,” ministry spokesman Bruce Skeaff said Thursday.

About 20 unpaid interns were let go from St. Joseph Media, said Douglas Knight, CEO of the Toronto Life parent company, which also owns Canadian Family, Quill & Quire and Fashion Magazine.

Compliance orders were only issued for Toronto Life, which let go five of its seven interns. St. Joseph dismissed the others because it was clear the company would be forced to comply with “new interpretations” of the Employment Standards Act, Knight said.

“After 20 years of running a hugely successful internship program that was very public and widely known, the (Ministry of Labour) decided to shut (it) down,” Knight said, adding he was told inspectors would be looking at all magazines in the province, many of which offer unpaid entry-level positions.

The Star revealed last fall that the province was aware the majority of unpaid internships in Ontario are probably illegal if the intern is not simultaneously enrolled in a high school, college or university program. Labour Minister Yasir Naqvi said enforcement officers would blitz workplaces for labour law compliance.

At a staff meeting Thursday, editorial interns at The Walrus were told their positions would disappear at the end of the week. Six unpaid interns are working there under four- to six-month contracts. One, a student, is able to stay on.

The magazine legally could continue the program as long as the interns were paid. But The Walrus, which operates as a non-profit, doesn’t have the budget for that, said editor and co-publisher John Macfarlane. He wrote an editor’s note last fall praising the high-quality work produced by the magazine’s interns.

“It’s not an option. If we had the money, we’d have been paying them already. The ministry knows this and the ministry is forcing us to shut down.”

The magazine industry can’t afford to pay everyone, Knight said. “I can’t even afford to pay regular cost of living increases to my staff, let alone my interns.”

Former Walrus intern Simon Bredin, who worked at the magazine unpaid for six months in 2012, said he was “pro-internship,” because there are so few ways to break into publishing.

“I do realize the ethical dilemma of unpaid internships. But why make a fragile industry an enforcement priority, as the Liberal government has?” he said.

Derek Finkle was Toronto Life’s first-ever intern in 1993, and now runs the Canadian Writers Group. Although he’s grateful he had the opportunity more than 20 years ago, he is now adamantly opposed to the practice.

“These are people who have some skills and are ready for an entry-level job, and should be paid for it,” he said.

There could be as many as 300,000 unpaid interns in Ontario, including 100,000 who are not on the books and not always protected by workplace safety laws.