Associate Lecturer - A couple of my students are potentially being exploited for free labour. How to proceed?

I'm an associate lecturer at a university here in the UK.

Today, a couple of my students approached me to ask my thoughts on a "job" one of the other lecturers has offered them over the summer. As far as I'm concerned, something stinks.

They were initially promised a "summer job" (in games development, which is what I teach and they study), but after having show interest, the offer changed to an internship, to an unpaid internship, to a "volunteer" role. The lecturer asked them to sign a contract committing them to 6 hours work a day minimum, completely unpaid. As far as I understand it, that's not how volunteering works. There were promises made to them about exposure to industry professionals, which would be worthwhile coming from an established company, but the lecturer making the offer has no released products at all, and zero industry connections I can find, aside from living near to a busy software development area here in the UK.

From what I can see, he wanted them to sign up to work for 6+ hours a day on zero pay, to produce a demo he could present at an upcoming trade fair. There was zero design documentation for the project, and no clear direction whatsoever.

Unfortunately, one of the students left her very decent job supervising at a supermarket to take this role when it was sold as a summer job, so she is now out of a job.

They asked me whether I think they should take the volunteer role, and I had to be honest; it stank. They were being asked to commit to 6+ hours work a day without pay for a company with zero released products to produce a demo for a product with no design or direction presented. I told them they could get just as much benefit spending the summer working on their own project, and they could build just as much industry connection as was on offer off their own backs, AND have copyright over whatever they produced (the contract on offer stated they would have no legal rights to what they produced). I pretty much told them to run far and fast.

The question is, should I raise this with the university? The lecturer seems to have attempted to deceive them and exploit them for free labour. One of them is now out of a good job as a result.

If not the university, who should I raise this with?

Submitted May 18, 2017 at 05:36PM by kutuup1989 http://ift.tt/2rwLdjr