A tweet by a city politician advertising an unpaid internship has landed her in trouble with constituents and youth advocates who say the position is illegal.

The job posting for work in Councillor Ana Bailao’s community office created “so much controversy” that she removed it from her website last week.

But the posting — which includes duties such as social media monitoring, drafting letters and correspondence, research, data cataloguing and community asset mapping — is still on her Facebook page.

“I really believe in that engagement and I wanted to particularly have the youth in my ward understand they can come here if they want,” said Bailao. “Sometimes, to be honest with you, it’s a bit of work for us.”

But the councillor is now categorizing the position as volunteer after advice from a Ministry of Labour hotline.

“The last thing I want is to do anything wrong,” she said. “I explained what my intention was and what I wanted to do. And (the ministry) said no, you should describe it as a volunteer.”

Lawyer Andrew Langille said the “Ministry of Labour gave her very bad advice” and it must have been someone in a junior position.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s the word volunteer or intern. It really goes to the duties that one is performing,” said Langille, who just finished a master’s degree in law at Osgoode Hall on the issue . “If you’re doing work that people normally get paid for, there’s an argument that the employer is engaging in employee misclassification.”

A spokesperson for the province also says that the work can’t be categorized as volunteer.

“The legal test for a true volunteer arrangement looks at several factors, but merely agreeing to work without pay does not in itself make you a volunteer,” Ministry of Labour spokesperson Jonathon Rose wrote in an email.

Unpaid internships are legal only in cases where someone is self-employed, in a co-op placement or a trainee, but there are strict criteria for the latter.

The work has to be for the benefit of the intern and the employer should derive “little, if any, benefit from the activity,” according to a labour ministry website. The website also says the intern can’t take someone else’s job and can’t be promised employment at the end of the training.

“If you perform work for someone you are an employee covered under the Employment Standards Act and should be paid — it doesn’t matter if you are called an ‘intern’ or not,” said Rose.

Despite the legislation, there are an estimated 100,000 illegal unpaid internships in the province every year, even though employers have a meagre one-in-10 success rate of defending them in court, said Langille.

In a letter to Ward 18 residents, Bailao wrote that unpaid positions save taxpayer money and are necessary to “keep on top of the immense amount of work” needed to keep residents “informed and engaged.”

She wrote that the positions could lead to paying jobs. “Indeed the majority of my staff began a working relationship with me in volunteer roles.”

Another politician, MPP Laura Albanese, recently advertised for an unpaid intern, but it was a mistake that has been corrected, said Rose.

“My understanding is the position was posted by a junior staff member without being reviewed and was later removed — no one was hired,” he said.

The issue of unpaid interns was in the news earlier this month when the University of Toronto students union wrote an open letter to Labour Minister Yasir Naqvi asking for tighter controls to end what it called a widespread practice. The letter notes there is an 18 per cent unemployment rate for recent graduates.

Rose said the ministry received the letter last week and is preparing a response.

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