Hooray! Hillary Clinton Brings On Fellows As Full-Time Staffers

Hillary Clinton's presidential organization has announced its decision to hire 20 more full-time paid field organizers to campaign in Iowa — eight of whom were formerly unpaid summer interns. In mid-June, the Clinton campaign came under fire for recruiting a troop of unpaid summer fellows amidst a hiring freeze, in order to lay the foundation for a strong team in Iowa. The Guardian reported the move as an attempt to work around "federal campaign-finance rules which ban an undeclared campaign from paying staff." While controversial (and something the Former Secretary of State has publicly spoken out against), unpaid internships are common on Capitol Hill. In fact, none of the roughly 300 interns employed at the White House last summer were paid for their work. Additionally, in a 2013 report by The Atlantic, it was found that only 35 of the 100 senators in U.S. Congress compensate their interns. Refinery29 spoke with a Clinton aide, who says that the fellows program will continue to allow its participants to rise in the ranks: "We’re thrilled to welcome volunteers for the summer, just like other campaigns in both parties have done in the past. Many successful fellows from a similar program during the Obama campaign now work with us...while others have gone on to other careers, and we’re confident that will happen with our fellows as well. The latest evidence of the intense grassroots interest in Hillary Clinton’s campaign comes from the tremendous interest in our fellows program." Landing a gig in the administration of the first female president might make all that work — paid and unpaid — worthwhile.