controversies regarding volunteers replacing employees and volunteerism

This is a list of organizations and initiatives opposed to some kinds of volunteering (unpaid work), or ALL kinds of volunteering, including unpaid internships at nonprofit organizations / charities. It is also a list of online and print articles about or addressing controversies regarding volunteers replacing paid staff. Most of the links are to initiatives or actions in Europe or the USA. It is not a comprehensive list, but it's meant to show just how pervasive - and, perhaps growing - the push back against volunteer engagement is.

This list has been compiled to help researchers regarding volunteerism, as well as for policy makers and volunteerism advocates who want to avoid these kinds of controversies at nonprofit organizations and government agencies. This list is also compiled to refute those who believe that there are no such controversies (believe it or not, those people DO exist).

If a URL no longer works, please cut and paste it into archive.org - it might be retrievable there. If you can't find it there, please don't write me - I won't be able to find it for you.

Additions are welcomed!

Initiatives on Twitter

Fair Pay Campaign On Twitter: @FairPayCampaign
"No-one should have their dreams denied because they can't afford to work for free. Join the fight to end unpaid internships."

Hague Interns Association On Twitter: @HagueInterns
HIA is an association of interns working at UN-related and international organizations in The Hague, Netherlands. "We work to improve intern welfare and promote intern rights."

unpaidisunfair.org. On Twitter: @UnpaidIsUnfair - "Unpaid internships are unfair. The United Nations should be no exception. Please sign our petition and tell the UN that young people matter."

internlaborrights.com. On Twitter: @InternLabor - Intern Labor Rights. "In this era of historic inequality, class divide, soaring student debt and persistent unemployment we call for an end to unpaid internships: Pay your interns!"

Canadian Intern Association. On Twitter: @canadianinterns - “The advocates against the exploitation of interns and aims to improve the internship experience for both interns and employers.”

Internjustice.com. On Twitter: @InternJustice - "Protecting the rights and wages of interns. M. Pianko, Esq, Director and Lead Counsel” NYC & Nationwide (U.S.A.)" So, I'm guessing this lawyer is offering to represent people who have done unpaid internships and want to sue for back wages.

Intern Aware. On Twitter: @internaware
"We campaign for fair internships. We want to see the minimum wage enforced and recruitment based on talent."

Intern Labor Rights. On Twitter: @InternLabor
"In this era of historic inequality, class divide, soaring student debt and persistent unemployment we call for an end to unpaid internships: Pay your interns!"

Interns ≠ Free Labor On Twitter: @EricGlatt
"Fighting wage theft guised as unpaid internships. Law student & Public Interest Fellow at Georgetown" facebook.com/pages/InternsL

Illegal Interns. On Twitter: @illegalinterns
"Unpaid Internships are Illegal. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised."

Articles - USA examples (multiple article links in these blogs, which also provide my view of unpaid internships)

In 1997, a Presidential summit on volunteerism, the President's Summit for America's Future, was held in Philadelphia. This three-day presidential summit was aimed at boosting volunteerism and community service efforts across the USA. President Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, former Presidents George Bush, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and retired Gen. Colin Powell all participated. The original web site, archived at archive.org, was www.americaspromise.org. The summit resulted in a lot of press coverage, the launch of at least one nonprofit, and a huge boost for the Corporation for National Service, particularly AmeriCorps. But the summit also resulted in some anti-volunteerism campaigns, from from the left and the right of the political spectrum. Here are some archived anti-volunteerism articles from that time:

Effectiveness of Volunteer Programs Questioned
Philadelphia National People's Campaign NPC's position on why Clinton's Volunteer Summit is anti-labor: "The problem arises when volunteers acting out of the goodness of their hearts are used to replace skilled and unskilled workers, driving even more workers and their families into poverty and insecurity. Last year, Congress and Clinton forced through numerous human services funding cuts against our communities. This year, they extol charity?! Weren't unions first organized on the conviction that workers shouldn't have to rely on charity to survive?"
NPC's position on Clinton's April 27 Summit vs his Welfare Cuts: "Outside this much ballyhooed Presidents' Summit on America's Future thousands of other people, mostly young and many who are volunteers, will be demonstrating. They call the Summit a sham and a "cruel hoax." Their message to these political leaders will be: move now to overturn the disastrous welfare legislation passed in 1996. This law, as President Clinton knows, will have a profoundly destructive impact on millions of children. It is utter hypocrisy to promote the idea that private charity and the benevolent activity of corporate CEO's can take the place of the rights that poor families won sixty years ago. In fact, service providers and charity groups that feed hungry people and house the homeless report that they are already overstretched beyond capacity."
Protesters Call Volunteer Summit Inadequate
The Ayn Rand Institute opposition to the 1997 Presidential summit on volunteerism in Philadelphia, including a photo of protesters.
"What Young People Really Need: Not Volunteerism but Happiness and Heroes" "the best American students and immigrants, even more so, desire one thing: freedom to pursue their own happiness. They are not excited by the prospect of selfless service at a homeless shelter; they are motivated by budding careers in such areas as business, law, medicine and computer science."

Ayn Rand adherents have a long history of being anti-volunteerism. A more recent example of this is the 2010 Atlas Society article, "You Will Volunteer!", which notes objections to the Peace Corps and the Corporation for National Service, and says "poverty, illiteracy, hunger are clearly not an emergency threat to our common social context," and, therefore, there's no need for the government to address such. "In some cases, they are simply the result of personal misfortune. In many cases, they are brought on by personal irresponsibility." However, I want to note that the Ayn Rand Institute has information on how to volunteer with it right here. And I have it screen captured in case it gets deleted.

Near the same time as the 1997 summit, there were debates about whether or not students should be required to perform community service in order to graduate. Here's an example of those opposed to the idea: Assumptions Made By Proponents of Mandatory Community Service Programs in Schools, from cybervpm.com

Europe-focused articles.

I've included the URLs here in case these get deleted off their original sites - you can use the original URLs to find archived articles at archive.org

Spending cuts 'destroying big society' concept, says retiring head of Community Service Volunteers (CSV), 7 February 2011, accessed June 19, 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12378974

The 'big society' is collapsing under its inherent absurdity, 6 February 2011, accessed June 19, 2013
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/06/david-cameron-big-society-coalition
Quote from article: "The ugly implication, habitual to champions of the big society, is that such unpaid civic activity does not support every established charity and volunteer effort."

Liverpool withdraws from government 'big society' pilot, 4 February 2011 accessed June 19, 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-12357450
Summary: Liverpool City Council leader said government cuts threaten the future of many local volunteer groups.

Big Society’ volunteering in long term care must not substitute for skilled paid staff, Feb 10 2012, accessed June 17, 2013
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/2012/02/10/big-society-volunteers-care-sector/
Journal Name: British Politics and Policy at LSE
"Volunteer workers could transform the long-term care sector. However, Shereen Hussein emphasizes that a greater understanding of the strengths and weakness of a voluntary workforce is needed in order to effectively identify the services it is best equipped to provide. The government should think of volunteers as a complement to professional staff rather than their replacement."

Librarians in Southampton (U.K.) striking in 2010 over efforts to replace paid workers with volunteers, 12 July 2010, accessed June 19, 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10599564
Unison union branch secretary Mike Tucker says in this article: "Libraries need professional staff to provide a modern service to the people of Southampton. Untrained, unskilled, unreliable volunteers will not provide this service.”

A Charter for Strengthening Relations Between Paid Staff and Volunteers: Volunteering England and the TUC,
accessed June 19, 2013
http://www.tuc.org.uk/workplace/tuc-17329-f0.pdf
The involvement of volunteers should complement and supplement the work of paid staff, and should not be used to displace paid staff or undercut their pay and conditions of service. The added value of volunteers should be highlighted as part of commissioning or grant- making process but their involvement should not be used to reduce contract costs.

UK Wants Volunteers to Make Up for Massive Public Service Cuts, February 09, 2011, accessed June 19, 2013, Labor Notes
http://www.labornotes.org/2011/02/uk-wants-volunteers-make-massive-public-service-cuts#sthash.BlRsnUGr.dpuf

‘Job substitution or volunteer substitution?’ Alan Strickland (Volunteering England) and Nick Ockenden (Institute for Volunteering Research) 22 June 2011,
accessed June 19, 2013
http://www.cypfconsortium.org.uk/UserFiles/File/job_substitution_volunteer_substitution_ockenden_strickland_2011_06_.pdf

Un sindicato de Bomberos carga contra los voluntarios por negarse a acudir a Rasquera, 20minutos.es, accessed June 19, 2013
http://www.20minutos.es/noticia/1486502/0/
Summary: A union of professional fire fighters had harsh words against Catalunya volunteer firefighters for refusing to work on extinguishing a fire that burned 3,000 acres, as leverage for improvements in their working conditions.

Los voluntarios de ambulancias, en riesgo (Ambulance volunteers at risk), 20minutos.es, 5 May 2013, accessed June 19, 2013
A Civil Defence in a town near Madrid laments pressure by a private ambulance companies lead the state to eliminate volunteer involvement.

Protección Civil, Ayuntamiento de Cangas del Narcea, accessed June 19, 2013
http://www.ayto-cnarcea.es/proteccion-civil
Civil Protection Volunteers do not replace or supersede intervention services, but collaborate, complement and support the actions of those and always request of citizens or administrations concerned.

Bénévoles et salariés : alliés ou adversaires ? (Volunteers and employees: allies or adversaries?), accessed June 19, 2013
http://bdp.calvados.fr/cms/accueilBDP/la-vie-des-bibliotheques/boite-a-outils/le-benevolat-en-bibliotheque/benevoles-et-salaries-allies-ou-adversaires
This online document asserts that “The presence of employees should not be a barrier to volunteering and volunteering should not be an obstacle to the presence of an employee... The role of the volunteer is not a substitute for a lack of staff but to be complementary to a team.”

Le statut des collaborateurs (the status of employees), Gestion Associative (management associations), on the Associanet media, quoting UNEDIC Directives from 1996
Accessed June 19, 2013
http://www.associanet.com/docs/collabo.html
Volunteer activities are alleged unprofessional within the following limits:

Volunteer activities in the framework of an associative movement should not replace staff who would normally undertake the administrative activities of the organization in question, and associations are to avoid the recruitment of such personnel that would affect the payment of benefits.
Volunteers should not undertake functions performed by a former employee of an agency, even if it is a non-profit and even if the functions performed are not paid
Never considered volunteers positions held in for-profit organizations

Analysis: Balancing staff with volunteers, Third Sector, Haymarket Professional Publications, 20 September 2011, accessed June 19, 2013
http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/news/Article/1092329/Analysis-Balancing-staff-volunteers.?dm_t=0,0,0,0,0
"Volunteers are replacing staff
When charities are forced to make redundancies, some bring in more volunteers. Stephen Cook and Ben Cook discover that it's a sensitive subject in the sector, and Mark Wilding talks to three charities about how they're handling it.”

Criticism Continues for UK Government Talk Re Volunteers

EU Agencies exploiting interns?

Volunteer controversy in archeology: A debate that broke out on Twitter in late 2019 about the ethics of involving volunteers in archeology (or archaeology, as the British spell it).

Out-of-work professionals because of COVID-19 pandemic pushing back against volunteer engagement

Other countries

Involving volunteers: a cop out for paying staff?
"Nurses in the Philippines are angry. They are being forced to work for free, or for a stipend on which they cannot live, while the hospitals where they are working call them “volunteers.” Some hospitals are even charging nurses for their “volunteer” work experience. Thousands of graduate nurses are paying hospitals and working for months without salaries under the guise of “training,” so the nurses can gain work experience and have an improved chance of being employed as a regular staff eventually."

Canada: We Charity / Me-to-We causes controversy recruiting 450 virtual volunteering roles at its own organization
The controversies center around:

Also see:

Microvolunteering is virtual volunteering
A rebuttal on my blog to the claim that microvolunteering isn't virtual volunteering.
Short-term Assignments for Tech Volunteers
There are a variety of ways for mission-based organizations to involve volunteers to help with short-term projects relating to computers and the Internet, and short-term assignments are what are sought after most by potential "tech" volunteers. But there is a disconnect: most organizations have trouble identifying such short-term projects. This is a list of short-term projects for "tech" volunteers -- assignments that might takes days, weeks or just a couple of months to complete.
One(-ish) Day "Tech" Activities for Volunteers
Volunteers are getting together for intense, one-day events, or events of just a few days, to build web pages, to write code, to edit Wikipedia pages, and more. These are gatherings of onsite volunteers, where everyone is in one location, together, to do an online-related project in one day, or a few days. It's a form of episodic volunteering, because volunteers don't have to make an ongoing commitment - they can come to the event, contribute their services, and then leave and never volunteer again. Because computers are involved, these events are sometimes called hackathons, even if coding isn't involved. This page provides advice on how to put together a one-day event, or just-a-few-days-of activity, for a group of tech volunteers onsite, working together, for a nonprofit, non-governmental organization (NGO), community-focused government program, school or other mission-based organization - or association of such.
Myths About Online Volunteering (Virtual Volunteering)
Online volunteering means unpaid service that is given by volunteers via the Internet. It's also known as virtual volunteering, online mentoring, ementoring, evolunteering, cyber volunteering, cyber service, telementoring, online engagement, and on and on. Here is a list of common myths about online volunteering, and my attempt to counter them.
Studies and Research Regarding Online Volunteering / Virtual Volunteering
While there is a plethora of articles and information about online volunteering, there has been very little research published regarding the subject. This is a compilation of publicly-available research regarding online volunteering, and a list of suggested possible angles for researching online volunteering. New contributions to this page are welcomed, including regarding online mentoring programs.
Creating One-Time, Short-Term Group Volunteering Activities
Details on not just what groups of volunteers can do in a two-hour, half-day or all-day event, but also just how much an organization or program will need to do to prepare a site for group volunteering. It's an expensive, time-consuming endeavor - are you ready? Is it worth it?
Recruiting Local Volunteers To Increase Diversity Among the Ranks
Having plenty of volunteers usually isn't enough to say a volunteering program is successful. Another indicator of success is if your volunteers represent a variety of ages, education-levels, economic levels and other demographics, or are a reflection of your local community. Most organizations don't want volunteers to be a homogeneous group; they want to reach a variety of people as volunteers (and donors and other supporters, for that matter). This resource will help you think about how to recruit for diversity, or to reach a specific demographic.
The Information About & For Volunteers You Should Have on Your Web Site
If your organization or department involves volunteers, or wants to, there are certain things your organization or department must have on its web site - not by law, of course, but from a point of view of ethics and credibility. To not have this basic information about volunteer engagement on your web site says that your organization or department takes volunteers for granted, does not value volunteers beyond money saved in salaries, or is not really ready to involve volunteers.
Screening Volunteers for Attitude
When an organization involves volunteers in high-responsibility, long-term roles, volunteer turnover can be a program killer. Screening is vital to finding the right people for high-responsibility, long-term volunteer roles, particularly those where the volunteer will work with clients and the general public, and to screen out people who may be better in shorter-term assignments or assignments where they would not work with clients or the general public, or who would not be appropriate in any role at the organization.
Letting Fear Prevent Volunteer Involvement is Too Risky
About how choosing NOT to involve volunteers is often, in fact, a greater risk than choosing to involve volunteers. To say, "We can't involve volunteers - it's too risky!" puts your organization at a profound disadvantage. This is a blog I wrote for Susan Ellis and Energize, Inc. - you leave my web site if you click on that link.
Using Third Party Web Sites Like VolunteerMatch to Recruit Volunteers
There are lots and lots of web sites out there to help your organization recruit volunteers. You don't have to use them all, but you do need to make sure you use them correctly in order to get the maximum response to your posts.
Using Video to Support Online Volunteers/Remote Volunteers.
Video is a great way to further support volunteers, and your computer probably already has all of the tools you need to make a video, or to engage in a live video conversation with others. Video isn't something to use only with online volunteers or remote volunteers (those providing onsite service at a different location than yours). It's also a tool you can use with new and current volunteers. In addition to an organization producing videos for volunteers, it can also work the other way around: volunteers can produce videos for organizations. This resource provides information on your options, and links to my own short video on the subject.
Using Real-Time Communications With Volunteers
A growing number of organizations are using real-time communications -- including video conferencing, online phone calls, chats and instant messaging -- to hold online meetings with volunteers, to allow volunteers to interact with staff, clients, or each other, or to involve volunteers in a live, online, real-time event. This resource provides more information on real-time communications with volunteers -- what the various tools are, how agencies are using them to interact with volunteers, and tips to encourage and maintain participation in synchronous communications.
Recognizing Online Volunteers & Using the Internet to Honor ALL Volunteers
Recognition helps volunteers stay committed to your organization, and gets the attention of potential volunteers -- and donors -- as well. Organizations need to fully recognize the efforts of remote, online volunteers, as well as those onsite, and not differentiate the value of these two forms of service. Organizations should also incorporate use of the Internet to recognize the efforts of ALL volunteers, both online and onsite. With cyberspace, it's never been easier to show volunteers -- and the world -- that volunteers are a key part of your organization's successes. This new resource provides a long list of suggestions for both honoring online volunteers and using the Internet to recognize ALL volunteers that contribute to your organization.