Volunteers of America or Latter Day Serfs?

Wages are stagnating, corporations are sitting on record profits and still not hiring, income disparity is at its most extreme ever, and governments  are crying poverty after giving huge tax breaks to those same money-hoarding corporations.

So what is a jobless person to do?  There is an alternative to wallowing in despair, people. Relieve your boredom and boost your self-esteem by working for free!  Call it what you want – volunteering, unpaid internship, being on the giving or receiving end of mentoring – unpaid labor is here to stay.  Wealthy business owners love it, and it seems there is an unending supply of willing slaves out there, eager for some real-life work experience and on the job training. And just think of your noble, selfless contribution to somebody else’s bank account!  It’s called vicarious satisfaction. And if you’re a conservative, it’s called patriotism, because you do not belong to a union, and the FICA Social Security contribution never raises its ugly socialist head.

Today’s New York Times has an article about a financially strapped California town using volunteers to perform routine police work, since it can no longer afford to pay a full department of trained cops. Unpaid workers range from retirees working the phones to young millennials learning the ropes in hopes of getting some remunerated gig sometime in the future.  This is taking the “neighborhood watch” program to a whole new level. As a volunteer, you can now dust for fingerprints and even use the law enforcement computer data base to track down DMV records (and spy on your neighbors).  The more I think about it, though, the more this whole set-up sounds a little creepy.  I don’t think I would want some unemployed Law and Order SVU junkie showing up at my house to investigate a burglary. Police work by its very nature attracts a lot of psychos and control freaks too, which is why big departments like the NYPD so rigorously screen applicants   You have to be psychologically squeaky clean before  they let you anywhere near a uniform and a badge. (and a gun).

And then there’s the huge world of unpaid bloggers, who used to be called free-lance writers. This category of unremunerated work got a lot of press recently when The Huffington Post was sold to AOL for mega-bucks.  The site, which relies heavily on recycled news and the aforementioned bloggers, did and still does get its revenue from computer-generated ads. Arianna Huffington, the founder, has been called upon to share her windfall with all her poor contributors by way of back pay and salaried positions. So far, that is not happening. Perhaps the most egregious example of a Huffington Post journalist who never got paid is Mayhill Fowler, who broke the story of Obama’s infamous “they cling to their guns and religion” remarks at a presidential campaign fund-raiser.  She didn’t get paid for that story, nor was she ever paid for the two years she continued to slog and blog for the millionairess Arianna, author of the best-seller “Third World America”.  I hadn’t known that Fowler was a “volunteer” or that Arianna apparently had kept her stringer stringing along all that time. I used to think Huffington was a witty, charming, albeit publicity-hungry progressive. I no longer think that way. Until she puts her money where her mouth is, I will avoid her like the plague.  The last time I checked in at the HuffPo, Arianna was blogging about (and paying herself for)  a tweetfest she had with Bill Maher at the Vanity Fair Oscar party.  The woman is a name-dropper as well as  a phony liberal. A few weeks ago, she let slip that  she was reporting from Davos, in between hobnobbing with other members of the rich and famous set, and waxing rhapsodic about the Egyptian demonstrators. So, byebye Huffy, you who hang out with Muffy, Buffy and Biff, and the whole hip, limousine liberal crowd.

Of course, in the interest of full disclosure, I am also something of a willing-victim type, in that I frequently “comment” for free  on New York Times op-eds. As much as the powers that be at the Times don’t admit it, the comments threads are at least as popular as the paid columnists’ contributions, if not more so.  Hits generate mucho ad revenue - for them.  We get paid with “readers’ recommendations” though…. The more “Rs”, the closer to the top of the pile we climb. And then there is the coveted Big Blue Box  (“highlight”) that the 20-something J-School grad moderators award the most “interesting and thoughtful” contributions.  The highlights, in my humble opinion, are about equally divided among truly fine comments, truly off the wall ones (usually the lone right-wing viewpoint out of a hundred by the choir of liberals), and the inane.  One recent comment which the moderators deemed highlight- worthy simply said “Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.”

But I digress. Let’s get back to volunteerism.  I recently wrote a post titled “Jackboots for Obama” which told of a recruitment effort by “Organizing for America”. This thinly disguised Obama reelection campaign arm of the Democratic National Committee is seeking “interns” for a summer training program that aims to put “boots on the ground” to get some sort of message out to the neighborhoods of America. It sounds a lot like the Christian right’s movement conservatisim, just with a neo-liberal twist, or fascism-light.  I did some more investigating, and it turns out that in order to be accepted as an intern trainee, you must commit to 40 hours a week with no pay, no transportation costs, and no compensation of any kind. OFA will, however, attempt to find you housing in whatever outpost to which you are assigned, but there’s no guarantee.  Then, once you "graduate" you will continue your unpaid work by recruiting even more unpaid volunteers to knock on the doors of America.

Here’s where it gets dicey. The Department of Labor has very strict rules about unpaid internships. Rule Number One states that in order to qualify, the program must provide a greater benefit to the intern than it does to the employer. In other words, the employer must be able to demonstrate, among other things, that the training/internship will qualify participants for future employment. And that is exactly what OFA is claiming. “Be a community organizer!” the email enthuses. We’ll show you how! Opportunity beckons.

Actually, opportunity does not beckon, not be a long shot. Obama himself just cut funds for such initiatives in his own budget proposal (to show his  conservative street cred) and House Republicans this week eliminated the Corporation for National and Community Service and  an additional $1.4 billion for community organization programs such as Habitat for Humanity, City Year and Americorps.  Talk about job-killing!

Since it is doubtful that Hilda Solis, Obama’s labor secretary, will ever investigate the OFA “internship” program, volunteers who feel they are being, or have been, taken advantage of can always sue for back pay. At least that’s what labor attorneys are saying about similar cases. AOL (new owner of HuffPo) had to settle with its unpaid news blog moderators recently after being sued under federal Wage and Hour statutes. The ball, so to speak, is in the workers’ court.  And there is precedent, incidentally, for presidential campaigns paying its workers.  The John Kerry campaign paid some students $300 a week to work the phones and distribute literature. Of course, that was during the boom years of high employment and before Wall Street crooks tanked the economy.  And Obama did say we must all tighten our belts and share the sacrifice.  That presumably also entails working for him just for the sheer joy of it.  See you in court, Mr. Prez, and I don't mean the basketball court!  Maybe you and Arianna can have a tweetfest while the jury is out.