More than 90% of California Capitol interns are unpaid by Legislature. Who’s left behind?

After leaving a job in college sports fundraising to pursue a path in politics, then 23-year-old Spencer Bowen took an unpaid internship for Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon.

Bowen, who found out about the part-time internship through a family connection, didn’t mind that it was unpaid. His second internship that summer four years ago with the city of Woodland could cover his living costs, and he wouldn’t have to pay rent living at his parents’ Davis home.

Soon after his internship began, Rendon’s office began to pay him. He was grateful.

In the back of his mind, however, Bowen often thought about those who were left out of these kinds of opportunities: “It’s pretty clear who it excludes,” Bowen said.

“If the only way to get involved is to take an unpaid internship for six months, that’s exclusionary to people who can’t afford that and then the people who can’t afford that are disproportionately (people of color).”

The Democratic-controlled California Legislature is known for churning out progressive policies that often side with labor unions and aim to lift up the state’s working-class residents. But the majority of internships in the state’s Capitol, which assist in creating the next generation of policymakers, go unpaid.

About 96% California Senate interns hired since 2018 were unpaid or so-called volunteers, according to records obtained through a Legislative Open Records Act request. Only 4% of interns hired since 2018 were paid, the records show.

The ratio is almost the same in the Assembly, where about 94% of interns since 2018 did not receive pay from the Legislature.

As of May, the California Senate has 44 interns, 27 unpaid and 17 paid, according to Erika Contreras, Secretary of the Senate. Records show that most internships in the Senate typically take place in the summer.

At the Assembly, 65 current interns are unpaid, four are volunteers who might be receiving a stipend from a third party like a fellowship and four are earning $15 an hour from the Legislature, according to salary records released in late-February and volunteer registration forms.

In a written statement, Rendon said paid internships attract more candidates, but noted it’s “speculative” to say that paid internships attract more diverse candidates.

“At least in my office, interns provide a fresh perspective that our paid staff doesn’t necessarily have,” he said. “Interns may be inexperienced at politics and policy, but they have incredible life experiences.”

He added that one of the best aspects of interning in the Legislature is the ability to network and make connections with other offices “to further their careers.”

Lawmakers get certain number of slots to hire paid legislative staff and a budget for other expenses. Sometimes, those staff budgets leave difficult choices for lawmakers who might want to pay interns but also would like to reward and retain their professional staff.

That’s one reason an advocacy group is asking the Newsom administration and the Legislature to allocate money specifically to pay interns.

Brittney Jimenez-Bayardo, a research fellow at Pay Our Interns, said those who participate in unpaid internships often go into debt in order to afford housing, food and transportation.

Her group wants the Legislature to set aside $27,000 a year for each lawmaker to pay interns. Over a year, that’s a $3.2 million request.

Racial inequity

Hugh Baran, a senior staff attorney and Skadden fellow at the National Employment Law Project, said unpaid internships in both the private and public sector are extremely common and can prevent Black and Latino students from breaking into entry-level positions.

“It ends up perpetuating a lot of systemic racism and inequality in the workplace,” Baran said. “When you have only unpaid opportunities, you are essentially limiting the ability of people of color to enter into public service.”

Generations of discriminatory policies, he said, have prevented Black and Latino families in the U.S. from building wealth at the same rate as white families.

In 2016, the national median wealth of a white family was $171,000, according to an analysis by the California Budget & Policy Center. For Black and Latino families, who are less likely to own a home or be able to afford higher education, the median wealth was $17,600 and $20,700, respectively.

Unpaid internships tend to draw applicants with financial means, according to Michele Siqueiros, president of The Campaign for College Opportunity, shutting out low-income and minority candidates.

“It is important that we value everybody’s labor, including, and especially young people, many of whom are not coming from vast set of resources or wealthy families,” she said.

A 2019 student survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers found that whites accounted for 71% of unpaid interns, followed by Hispanic Americans, 10%, African Americans, 7%, and Asian Americans, 4%.

Among paid interns, whites accounted for 74% of internships, compared to 7.9% of Hispanic Americans, 6% of African Americans and 5% of Asian Americans, the study showed.

The study found that white and Asian students were more likely to be paid interns than unpaid interns. Black students were most likely to be unpaid interns than paid interns, according to the study, and Latino students were more likely to never hold an internship in the first place.

Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, D-Bell Gardens, said she couldn’t afford to take unpaid internships early in her career and instead applied for ones that provided a wage or stipend.

“I was lucky that I was able to find programs that let me do research and gave me a stipend, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to do those programs,” Garcia said, who was identified in a Pay Our Interns report as paying an intern in 2019. “We need to remove those barriers for all folks, especially for our low-income folks or people of color.”

Working two jobs as an unpaid intern

Four former interns spoke to The Sacramento Bee on the condition of anonymity because they feared revealing their names would hurt future job prospects in the Capitol.

All four said they held down additional jobs while they worked as unpaid interns. None of them regretted participating in their unpaid internships or felt their work was taken for granted.

“That’s how you get your foot in the door – you do an internship,” one Latina former intern said. “A lot of people ... they’re not able to have the experience if it’s not paid.”

One worked as an unpaid intern for a Democratic Assembly member in the fall of 2017, earning college credits for the internship. He held two other jobs to cover his living costs, increasing his stress and giving him less time to devote to his coursework.

“It was a hard experience balancing everything,” he said. “School definitely wasn’t my priority with everything else that was happening.”

Another woman said she worked as an unpaid intern during the summers of 2013 and 2014 for an Assembly member. She said she worked early mornings at her food service job before her shift at the Capitol. She woke up as early as 3:45 a.m. to start her day.

“If I was lucky, I’d have time to shower before going to my internship, so I didn’t smell like (food),” she said.

Bowen, who now works for the city of Woodland, said many students sacrifice earnings in the interest of making connections in the Capitol.

“I’m a white guy who was fortunate enough that his parents still had his childhood bedroom, and they lived in a city sort of close to the Capitol,” he said. “I just sort of lucked out in that way and I was really privileged in that way.”

Ways to pay interns

Garcia said it’s not easy to find funds to pay an intern, but has found creative ways to make room in her budget. For instance, she was able to pay an intern this year because someone on her staff took maternity leave.

Assemblywoman Blanca Rubio, D-Baldwin Park, said she’s used money from her budget to pay some interns’ meals and transportation passes.

“Obviously, (interns) want the experience, and if it’s a non-paid internship, you do it because that gets your foot in the door. But sometimes you see folks struggling,” Rubio said.

Some lawmakers, including Rubio, look for outside help when they try to find a way to compensate their interns.

Assemblyman Rudy Salas, D-Bakersfield, said his office works with the Maddy Institute and Sacramento Semester Program from California State University, Sacramento to make paid internships possible.

Fellowships like the California State Assembly Fellowship Program and Senate Fellows Program also exist. Fellows in those programs receive a monthly stipend of $2,964, including health, dental and vision benefits.

“Having gone through both (paid and unpaid internships), I can tell you that being paid helped me focus and maximize my impact for my place of work because I didn’t have to run to an after-hours job to help pay the bills,” he said.

Siqueiros says that practice still leaves out potential candidates who aren’t enrolled in universities offering internship stipends.

“We’re in the midst of a pandemic where disproportionately Black and Latinx families are losing jobs, are affected by COVID health-wise, are dying in disproportionate numbers,” she said. “To not pay young people that are providing a service to your office or to your company – I think it is unfair and it’s inequitable.”

This story was originally published May 20, 2021 at 5:00 AM.