– Is it ethical for companies to use unpaid interns if they know they will not have any jobs to offer at the end of the internships or if the unpaid internships replace paid jobs?  Why or why not?

I don’t think that this would be a problem with it being ethical or not if a company uses an unpaid intern even if they will not have a job to offer at the end of an internship.  The intern knows that they may or may not have a job offering at the end of an internship.  This is never a guarantee so I don’t think it would be unethical for them to offer an internship to someone knowing they don’t have a job to offer at the end.  This is still allowing the intern to get the experience that they will need to get that first job.  It will make it easier for the intern to go someplace else with that extra experience but it will not be as easy as if that company could just offer them a job.  They will have to do the extra work to get themselves a job elsewhere.  The only time it would be unethical is if the company hired that unpaid intern and let them believe they would have a paid job at the end of the internship and the company had no intention of hiring them.

The other side of this question though is another story.  If a company hires a bunch of unpaid interns to take the place of paid jobs, I believe that is being unethical.   It’s not fair to those that are working to be fired so that the company can hire interns that they are not going to pay.  I know that it is going to save the company all that money they would be paying those employees along with their benefits they may be receiving but it’s just not right and it’s not how a business should be run.  I know that if I was an intern and I knew that someone was fired just so they had a place for me in the company as an unpaid intern, I would not take it.  I would refuse. That is not the type of company that I would want to work for.