This conceptualisation of risk (makes me think of Beck's Risk Society?) takes the status quo of #casualisation for granted.

It seeks to achieve reform whereby the worker is made to accept 'risk' as if there's parity of power between them and the employer. https://popevsprecarity.com/risk-sharing/ 

Management love to frame everything in terms of 'risk'; just because they do it, we shouldn't accept their premise. We need to kick precarity out of the academy and we can only do that through employment practices that do not create & maintain two- or three-tier workforces.

Introducing internships into the mix would only incentivise employers to happily offer work on lower pay grades, treat staff even more patronisingly, and also take the chance to offer even more work as 'opportunities for gaining experience'.

Hourly paid and fixed term contracts are always exploitative, and they can only lessen their exploitative character when the workers/employees can gain more security/employment rights through a continuity of employment via 2 year+ contracts.

Employers already love to create contracts w/ 'artificial gaps' so you don't even get to have 'employee' status (&sick pay entitlements). They offer timesheet-based 'work arrangements' for up to 12 weeks + a gap + other few weeks. Many have worked tirelessly to end this practice.

I can only imagine how happy they'd be to offer 'internships' (which are commonly understood and accepted to be short-term) instead of proper fixed-term contracts. How would anyone with years of work experience, present their 'internship' on their CV & at job interviews?

& some more thoughts here https://twitter.com/CerasellaChis/status/1359522903260340224?s=20