Regulators Investigating Unpaid Internships

theodp writes "With job openings scarce for young people, the number of unpaid internships has climbed in recent years, leading federal and state regulators to worry that more employers are illegally using such internships for free labor. Convinced that many unpaid internships violate minimum wage laws, officials in Oregon, California, and other states have begun investigations and fined employers. 'If you're a for-profit employer or you want to pursue an internship with a for-profit employer, there aren't going to be many circumstances where you can have an internship and not be paid and still be in compliance with the law,' said the acting director of the US Deptartment of Labor's wage and hour division."

Comments

Los Angeles and its entertainment industry

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see this too much in the tech industry, but I saw a lot of it going on in the entertainment industry. Los Angeles is a really creepy city that exploits innocent and not-so-wise young people who want to make it big. This is going to hit that city like a brick in the face.

Re:Los Angeles and its entertainment industry

[QRDeNameland]

I don't see this too much in the tech industry, but I saw a lot of it going on in the entertainment industry. Los Angeles is a really creepy city that exploits innocent and not-so-wise young people who want to make it big. This is going to hit that city like a brick in the face.

Most "normal" industries/professions like tech have paid internships to perform good functions (at least on paper) for that business, to develop a future labor pool while giving an employer cheap yet motivated temporary help.

It is generally "elitist professions" like government/politics and media where the *unpaid* internships are prevalent, and they are definitely a "paying your dues" process. And as is touched on briefly in the article, this system gives the wealthier kids a distinct edge in these fields, as they are far more likely to be in a position to be able to afford working for no pay.

Such "Enforcement" is a joke

[jeko]

Read the article. The companies were fined a small fraction of what the intern's wages would have been. It's as if the penalty for robbing a bank was that you'd have to give back twenty percent of the take, and then, only for the times that you were actually found guilty at trial.

Such "enforcement" is worse than none at all. At least if no company were caught and "punished," there might still be the risk of real penalty in the future. Now, the companies know for a fact that IF they're caught, the penalty will only be a fraction of what they owed anyway.

Imagine if the IRS came to you and said, "If we catch you cheating on your taxes, you can be assured we'll make you pay a fifth of what you owe."

Plus

[sonicmerlin]

This is a good issue for government to investigate, as obviously interns can't exactly speak out publicly about their lack of pay without suffering a loss of employment.

Also salaried interns means more taxes for government... so there's always that incentive.

Do they even get workers comp if they get hurt?

[Joe The Dragon]

Do they even get workers comp if they get hurt? or are they not workers and just get pushed to the side?

Glad to.

[Aladrin]

Back when I was trying to get my first programming job, I'd have been glad to take an unpaid internship to get the experience needed for my resume to get looked at.

After a year and a half of having no job (okay, towards the end I was forced to take a job at a grocery store to pay the bills) I would have done just about anything to get a good job. I couldn't find any companies willing to take an intern or minimum wage employee to that experience. I finally landed an interview for a job that was way over my head and got the job. Luckily, I learn quickly.

As for companies abusing it... The topic of this article is why they wouldn't take interns. They said they were afraid of this very thing. Companies are in a bad position with interns. They can't use them to make money, yet they suck money from the company while the company trains them. Why the hell would a company do that?

I'd even take it a step further: If the intern isn't making the company any money, they aren't doing anything worthwhile... And if they aren't doing anything worthwhile, they aren't learning anything. Which defeats the entire point of being an intern in the first place.

Re:Glad to.

[Todd Knarr]

Why would a company hire a paid intern? Just look at the complaints from hiring managers about the lack of qualified/skilled applicants. Typically an internship pays much less than the kind of position the person's interning for. By taking on the intern the company gets some work for much less than they'd otherwise have to pay, they get to find out whether this person's a good fit, and they provide the training they feel applicants would need for that kind of position. At the end they potentially have a trained candidate ready for a job, without having to go through the expense they'd have to to hire a regular employee and possibly have them not work out. And even if the intern doesn't work out for them, someone who interned at another company may show up with the training and experience needed for a position the company's hiring for, see the aforementioned complaints about lack of qualified candidates.

Of course the companies would like to get all the benefits of having trained, qualified people on tap without having to do anything to get them. To me, though, that's like the times I hear executives going on about how they need to charge their customers as much as possible while keeping costs to a minimum, and then they turn around and complain about how their suppliers are trying to charge as much as possible while delivering goods that barely meet the minimum standards and having poor customer service. They simply don't get the connection.

High School must be longer than I remember

[ClosedSource]

If a high school student can afford all that stuff working 30 hrs/week at minimum wage, they must be spending a lot more years there than I did.