While Hillary Clinton was publicly rallying for increased wages, the Democratic front-runner was also hypocritically relying on unpaid interns to help with her presidential campaign, a former campaign fellow has alleged.
Writing in a USA Today opinion piece, Carolyn Osorio says that she joined the Clinton campaign as a fellow shortly after the former secretary of state announced her bid in April.
However, Osorio was told that she first had to move to Nevada on her own dime, and then agree to work for free.
"I had hoped a trailblazer would be more willing to break the mold of indentured servitude that haunts my generation," Osorio wrote. "Finding out that Hillary perpetuates the exploitation known as unpaid internships was like discovering that Santa wasn't real."
She continued, "For a woman I supported to demand this of me felt repulsive. Forget arguments about raising the minimum wage.
"I can't even get a wage. What exactly are Hillary Clinton's priorities and how do I change them?"
The former secretary of state's presidential campaign has made a significant attempt to portray Clinton as a champion of everyday middle class Americans who is able to relate to their struggle, rather than a privileged career politician with deep ties to Wall Street. And as such, her campaign has flaunted its penny-pinching tactics, even letting a Washington Post journalist accompany the campaign on a bus trip between New York and Washington to document her supposed frugality.
However, Osorio expressed surprise that Clinton had extended such "cheapness" to her own staff.
"Voters are evidently supposed to feel pleased with Hillary's miserly commercial flights (in first class) and economical Amtrak trips while discounting her unpaid staff's out-of-pocket expenses as simply smart business," she wrote.
"I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Unpaid work is common in campaigns, and as secretary of State, Hillary worked for the Obama administration. At the same time the administration was cracking down on unpaid internships in the private sector, it continued not paying the 300 annual interns in the White House."
In response to Osorio's report, the Clinton campaign issued a statement to The Hill expressing how excited they are to have free labor for the summer.
"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 on this campaign and we're sure the same will be true with many from this group," the unidentified aide told The Hill. "The latest evidence of the intense grassroots interest in Hillary Clinton's campaign comes from the tremendous interest in our fellows program."
