Obama Ends Controversial Intern Program
The Washington Post reports:
President Obama plans to issue an executive order, perhaps as early as this week, ending a federal internship program that critics say circumvents proper hiring practices.
Since it began in 2001, the Federal Career Intern Program has been used to hire more than 100,000 people - few of them interns as traditionally understood and many of them border and customs officers who later became permanent-status federal employees.
The program has drawn fire from federal employee unions and from the government board that oversees federal hiring practices, which ruled in November that the program undermined the rights of veterans, in particular, who were seeking federal work.
According to a draft copy of the executive order, which The Washington Post obtained from a person involved with the review process, the program will be terminated in March and be replaced with a program clearly designed to provide short-term federal work opportunities for recent graduates of schools of all kinds.
"This program has led to abuses in hiring," said John Gage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal labor union. He also said it had created "a feeling of hostility in the workforce to the intern program."
Because it had been used to skirt regular hiring procedures, he said Saturday, federal workers will be pleased to see it end and be replaced by a program targeted specifically to young people and graduating students.
The FCIP was created by President Bill Clinton in 2000 with the stated goal of attracting "exceptional men and women to the Federal workforce" and preparing them "for careers in analyzing and implementing public programs."
