Tanya de Grunwald, founder of careers advice website GraduateFog.co.uk highlights the imporance of the campaign against unpaid internships. Over the coming months we will be working with organisations such as GraduateFog.co.uk to campaign for fairer internship laws for students and graduates.

"I am extremely grateful that NUS has answered the call of the interns' rights campaigners and agreed to help inform students that they have the right to be paid for the work that they do when they join the workforce after graduation. As figures show that only 10% of graduates [source: Internocracy] know that unpaid internships are illegal, it's clear that this crucial message isn't reaching young people through the traditional channels at present. 

"I want the university careers services to take a more active role in educating their students about the battle for a fairer deal for interns - it is their duty to supply this vital information. I also urge them to follow the advice produced by their official body AGCAS, which says careers services should not promote illegal internships to their students. Continuing to do so confuses the message to students - and means that some universities are actually helping employers to find students to exploit. At the same time, for every student who is exploited, many more are excluded because they cannot afford to work for free. 

"Unpaid internships - a practice dismissed as harmless by some - is already proving to be enormously damaging for a whole generation of graduates. It is unfair and unsustainable. Whatever our politicians and business leaders say, those of us on the ground know that unpaid work is not a solution to graduate unemployment - it is a big part of the problem. That's why those of us who have regular contact with students and graduates must work together so that the message reaching young people is clear and consistent."

Tanya de Grunwald, founder of careers advice website GraduateFog.co.uk