A leading Scottish public relations figure has called for an end to unpaid internships across the PR, media and marketing industries.
Alex Barr, founding director of PR and digital media firm The Big Partnership, said the practice was often "tantamount to slave labour".
His comments came as the agency said it would pay all its interns the voluntary living wage of £8.25 per hour.
It said it had already paid interns the national minimum wage for many years.
The agency, which has offices in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Dunfermline and Liverpool, has taken on more than 40 interns in the past two years.
Seven of them have subsequently been given full-time permanent roles.
Mr Barr said many of his company's new interns were "genuinely shocked" to receive a pay-cheque at the end of the week
Mr Barr said many firms were still "failing to properly reward" people looking to gain experience and increase their chances of getting a permanent job, despite efforts by industry bodies to discourage the practice of unpaid internships.
Mr Barr said: "We've had numerous examples of people, including interns, who've come to us after having worked somewhere else without being paid - in one case for over 10 months.
"That's tantamount to slave labour and is abusing the trust of young people who are simply trying their best to get a foothold in our industry.
"In some cases, companies are not even offering basic expenses.
"The fact that many of our interns are genuinely shocked when we hand them a pay-cheque at the end of the week underlines the scale of the problem."
He added: "Asking interns to work for nothing on the premise of 'gaining valuable experience' is a fig-leaf used by too many agencies and devalues the vital contribution that interns make to our industry.
"At Big we pay our staff well for the results they deliver to clients.
"Over and above our basic legal obligations, we are now increasing what we pay our interns for the work they do, while offering them a structured, carefully-managed programme of development and exposure to real project work from day one."
