CUTE Québec campaign against unpaid internships, 2017-2018

The Comités unitaires sur le travail étudiant (CUTE), a Quebec student movement against unpaid student internships, led a province-wide campaign starting in 2017 and lasting through 2019. Unpaid internships were illegal in Quebec, unless they were part of a program approved by a university, college, or secondary school board – so there were approximately 55,000 internships in the province. Such internships can require many hours per week, and some academic programs require multiple internships. The student activists opposed unpaid internships as exploitation of student labour, without pay and with less protections, and as a feminist issue, because many internships are in female dominated fields, such as social work and teaching. They targeted the provincial government, calling for revisions to labour law and better public sector funding. The campaign spanned multiple universities and cities. It entailed several one-day strikes, included a strike by 54,000 social work students In November 2018, as well as marches and demonstrations, with one Montrel march attracting 20,000 students. A year later, in spring 2019, the provinece did not change the law but it announced a new $30 million scholarship program to provide student interns with financial compensation.