Former unpaid Clinton campaigner: Pay your interns [yet remains "a Stockholm syndrome victim"]

The Hill ^ | June 24, 2015 | Kyle Balluck

[Cincinatus' Wife]

A former Hillary Clinton campaign fellow is accusing the Democratic frontrunner of hypocrisy for relying on unpaid interns and fellows while publicly calling to for increased wages.

Carolyn Osorio writes in a new USA Today opinion piece that she joined the campaign as a fellow after Clinton announced her bid in April, adding that she had to move to Nevada and work there for free.

"I had hoped a trailblazer would be more willing to break the mold of indentured servitude that haunts my generation," she writes.

"Finding out that Hillary perpetuates the exploitation known as unpaid internships was like discovering that Santa wasn't real."

The Clinton campaign has flaunted its penny-pinching ways, letting a Washington Post journalist accompany campaign chairman John Podesta on a bus trip between New York and Washington.

But Osorio was surprised to see the "cheapness" extend to its staff.

“For a woman I supported to demand this of me felt repulsive. Forget arguments about raising the minimum wage," she writes.

"I can't even get a wage. What exactly are Hillary Clinton's priorities and how do I change them?"

As Osorio admits, "unpaid work is common in campaigns."

Interns are essential to help campaigns blanket the country with door-knockers, canvassers and more, opportunities that could help those interns secure a future full-time job. A report in The Guardian from earlier in June says that the campaign has a "hiring freeze" for paid organizing positions and notes the campaign's use of unpaid "organizing fellows" in Iowa.

But Clinton has regularly touted policies like raising the minimum wage and providing tax credits to businesses that give apprenticeships and other "bonuses" for giving them to young adults.

Osorio calls on Clinton to "question your role in this exploitative system," but reaffirms her support for Clinton as the best chance to buck the cycle.

"It might make me sound like a Stockholm syndrome victim, but after all of this, Hillary is still the best chance we have. If there is to be a better world for my future children, she's the only hope," she writes.

"Hillary will get my free vote even if she will never have my free help."

[blackdog]

My daughter is spending the summer preparing briefs annd doing research for lobbying law firms in Northern California. (The 9th circuit and California Superior Courts) She is getting paid. She is one of a very few last year law students at her tier one school actually getting paid for an internship.

Most students are children(like 25 is still a child?) of extremely wealthy parents and couldn't care less about being paid by anything other than their trust funds. It's crazy!

[ExCTCitizen]

Hillary not paying workers? You should be paying $15/hour.