Slashdot Mirror
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."
I believe that internships are important. I was an intern at SGI back in the late '90s, and I still frequently think back to the things I learned working there and applying those lessons to my current career.
That established, I can also say without hesitation that tech internships aren't like apprenticeships -- you're generally not learning the skills you need to do a given job, but rather applying the skills you've already amassed.
Really, the benefit of internships is twofold: You learn how to operate in an environment where you're not simply taking instructions (like you would working a job at Subway or mowing lawns or answering support calls, the typical menial jobs you can get before college) but rather participating in the job and dealing with peers, managers, HR twits, etc. Second, and related to this, you're doing it to get it on your resume, proving that you've already been through the learning curve.
So getting back to my initial point, while an intern obviously may not be as effective as a 'regular' employee, interns are still generally 'earning their keep' from Day 1 by producing value for the company.
A critical part of any internship, then, ought to be learning to value your skills, to get an idea of what your services are worth. And unpaid internship, while still better than nothing, skips this lesson, and it really is a key one -- I know people who are 15 years into their career and still unable to realize they're wasting their time in a given position or with a particular employer.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
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.
Really... never understood it. I get the idea of working 'cheap' to gain experience, and I understand volunteering. I also have offered to work at some places for a short time (week or so) to get a feel for the place. But I've never understood applying to ask to be considered to be approved to then go spend months of my life working for a company which is in the business of making a profit. I guess I never travelled in those sorts of circles where unpaid internships led to high-paying positions of immense money and power, which is why so many people would be lining up to do them.
If anyone would care to engage in some unpaid internships for me, let me know.
creation science book
Unpaid internships are also an easy wayo make sure that only "the right people" (i.e., people from wealthy families) have a chance to get into certain fields. In some fields, it's hard to get hired without experience, and the only way to get the initial experience is through an internship. But there are a lot of people who can't afford to work without any income, so if only unpaid internships are available, only those lucky enough to have been born into wealth can break into those fields.
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
So employers will now apply the obvious solution and pay them exactly the state's minimum wage if they're found to be violating the law with unpaid internships.
I'm sure the "slavery" will be allowed for the non-profits.
People working for free do not have jobs, therefore they cannot be involved in 'job creation' one way or another.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Nice argument! Unfortunately, it fails because an unpaid internship isn't a job.
Unpaid internships are, in a sense, anti-job creation. Nothing liberal about that - nothing hysterical like 'government goons' about that, either.
You want a healthy economy, you need jobs. Unpaid internships punish job creation. Why would company 'a' hire a person, give them a wage, when company 'b' can get a person to do the same work, for free?
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."
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
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.
I'm sorry but that's not really the issue here. They aren't trying to give anyone a raise, they want employers to pay minimum wage to people who work for them. You see, free market systems don't really have a magical hand guiding them to the best possible outcome every time. In this case, companies need a nudge to pay their interns because job markets have made experience more valuable than the degree the students just earned. Otherwise students jump on the opportunity to become near indentured servants, if it means they might get hired on for pay later on.
Do they even get workers comp if they get hurt? or are they not workers and just get pushed to the side?
The free market homeostatic mechanisms exist within a larger system (the liberal democratic state), which elects governments of alternating greater regulatory predilection and lesser regulatory predilection. These back-and-forth moves by the electorate are a feedback control system whose long-term consequence is to find or wander near the average level of regulation of market activity / corporate power etc that the populace wants. Another homeostatic mechanism operating within the larger system and setting bounds on the subsystems, like the free market.
And in case you're going to say the free market should be the ultimate power in society, let me introduce you to my Russian mafia buddies who can talk it over with you. Just nice polite conversation yes?
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
college sports players are the same and need to be payed for playing and not taking way crap / no work fake job in the school book store / school library.
The key words here being "anonymous coward".
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Read the article. I understand -- and my experience was -- that interns as currently used are basically workers in all but name.
However, the federal definition of an intern is that they DON'T produce value for a company. "Internships" are basically supposed to be charitable positions. Companies are supposed to be able to provide in detail the learning program of the interns they are supposed to be TEACHING, not exploiting. The company is expected to LOSE money on an internship, hence the tax breaks they're given.
The facy that most companies work interns like employees is basically half a step up from child labor, akin to a high school teacher who sleeps with one of their students the day she turns 18. Even if you manage to skirt the rules -- which really you don't -- it's still pretty repugnant.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
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.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
You want a healthy economy, you need jobs. Unpaid internships punish job creation. Why would company 'a' hire a person, give them a wage, when company 'b' can get a person to do the same work, for free?
Because in order to be a legally unpaid internship under US labor law there are six criteria that must be met, and the overall cant of the regulations is that legitimate internships actually constitute organizational deadweight.
Here, educate yourself: http://laborlaw.typepad.com/labor_and_employment_law_/2007/11/unpaid-internsh.html
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
This is a great example of harmful competition in market systems. Apprenticeships of various kinds are traditional and important, but when they fail to pay at least a living wage (be it medical or tech internships), they're unhealthy for society and often unhealthy for those involved. People who would enter such fields are at a huge disadvantage should they refuse to shoulder more debt to reach a nicely employable state, while the status quo is quite nice for those who don't need to pay a living wage.
The role of the state is to serve the public good, and one way it should exercise that role is to act as a tool for collective bargaining with other entities (states, companies, etc). We should decide that as a society we won't do business (revoke charters, disallow employment, effectively negotiating an end to their ability to work in our country) with companies that have such practices, and force a shift in how business is done.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
I go to Texas Tech; most of the employers at the job fair there do paid internships. Both the IT internships I've gotten were excellent pay, excellent experience.
Unpaid internships are for when you don't have time to look up a well-paying one, or it's a company that's so badass you're willing to do free work.
You would be right if all companies followed the rules but many do not hence the article.
Traditionally, the way to start a career with a political party was to volunteer to post flyers and do the canvassing, help arrange conferences and other such work. State unions would probably make sure anyone in the public sector was paid something.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
One of my respected professors told us flat-out that if you can get paid for work, you should— applying for internships is very counter-productive. I can see the value in certain limited fields (such as animation, mentioned in the article) if they follow the specific rules laid out for under-paid or unpaid interns, but there is absolutely no reason it should spread to the general business community. And if students become convinced that internships are necessary, well, there's a cost savings for the employer with very little benefit to the worker.
My first post-college job was a real job, and I'd had no internship experience prior to that, only good letters of reference from my professors and perhaps a dash of desperation on the part of my employer. But I'd rather work fast food than be an unpaid flunky for a job that didn't really need more than some basic training, which many of these things do. Internships should be left to those fields that demand a high level of immediate competence and inside knowledge, and the rest should be left to legitimate on-the-job training.
Actually I am a lab rat in an elaborate plot to take over the world.
So what makes you think if the government makes new rules, companies will follow them?
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
So what? Often times doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is still better than not doing it at all.
They aren't working for "free", they're working for the experience. Very, very few people are actually dumb enough to work for no compensation at all. Not all compensation is necessarily monetary.
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
Boeing maybe an example of what good an Internship Programs should be like. I find their generosity to let those in college have a chance to participate in what Corporate Earth considers to be opportunities of specialized fields. These multinational corporations let students see first hand all they can be. Bravo Boeing, Bravo.
And really if they wanted to nail unpaid internships the first sector they should look at is public schools.
I was out of work for nearly all of 2009, so I spent my days at a floundering start-up with no expectations of a paycheck. They won because I was able to significantly advance their product development and I won because I got the experience and contacts needed for my current job. For my situation, I'm glad there weren't laws on the books preventing me from 'exploiting' myself.
Dance like you're hurt, Love like you need money, and work when somebody's watching.
-Scott Adams
What makes you think the government is making new rules? They are investigating whether they need to enforce current rules.
I would point out that at least in recording studios, you'd better be ready to fetch coffee and get it right- because it's a winnowing-out process that is teaching the studio about you as much as you're learning about the studio.
The studio needs you not to come in there thinking your book learning prepares you for the real job. Hypothetical example- let's say you're tracking heavy guitars. You've experimented, and you discovered that if you swap out the SM57 often used for this for an Audix D6 (a kick drum mic!) you get a way bigger, more metal heavy guitar sound, so you're ready to make your contribution and you put up the D6 instead- and get spanked for it and banished, even though in solo it obviously sounds much bigger. You are sad.
And well you should be- because your 'better sound' isn't going to sit in the mix. It's stomping all over the bass, the top end fights with the vocals, it's throwing the whole balance of attention off and worse, the guitar players for this band aren't so hot and it's the bass and drums that are really going to salvage things, especially the bass which is nailing a deceptively simple part that you wrote off as unimaginative- but which the more experienced guys recognize as the song's basic hook, simple as it is. Your guitar sound's screwing that up completely.
Back to the coffee. If you can't come up with the humility to try and do your best on an apparently menial task such as getting the coffee right- even though it offers no opening for you to show off your skills- what chance do you have of getting a mix right, when most of the 'impressive smart-guy engineer' tricks anybody could offer will not actually serve the song other than as distractions- when you're working with bands which very likely have only one chance in their lives to grab at the chimera of recording industry success? Very often showing YOUR quality will detract from the quality of the final result, if nothing else by distracting.
I honestly think the rules are different for glamour professions (like studio internships!) where there's a long line of would-be superstars trying to get a chance to show their awesome to the world. Hell, the musicians have to pay to gig in some locales. I'm not sure it's the same for software employers- but I am sure the motivation's the same. It's either riches or status, and when it's status ('I work for Google, I'm elite' or whatever) there will be people ready to pay to work at the status job.
And when you have jobs like in the recording studio, where the depth of 'black arts' knowledge can be pretty deep and counterintuitive, especially in mix which is a whole can of worms all its own- there's a relevance to the unpaid coffee-fetcher internship, because it's like boot camp- as long as you haven't figured out how little you really know, you are dragging down the whole enterprise with careers at stake. _Everybody_ is running scared and groping in the dark above a certain success level, because there aren't consistent, predictable metrics for what's going to work... it gets pretty voodoo dance-y after a while.
Just some thoughts from an old slashdotter with studio-owning friends...
I can't believe you said that stuff to that guy. All he said was it is easier for the already wealthy to take unpaid internships (which would be true), and those positions make it easier to break into the industry (which is also true). How is that redneck or racist to point out two bits of data?
Don't bother replying, I am guessing such vileness comes from being a chronic drunk, or a dry drunk who is trying to pass for sober.
Pages for the legislators' pleasure.
Being good at making and delivering coffee says a lot about how you well you'll do in the future - as an errand boy.
Yes, it's nice to stroke your ego by having a young person act like your slave, but if you think it has some professional purpose you're just lying to yourself.
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.
RTFA.
You misunderstood. He wasn't trying to break into the assholes industry.
My last company got a new manager a while back. He had this "brilliant" idea to hire interns as low wage work. Our security infrastructure was woefully unprepared to handle all of these new people with lower security privileges than a full worker, so the full timers spent most of their time checking in/out the interns code, and walking then through everything by hand. By the time the interns were semi-autonomous, it was time for them to leave. Financial statements showed that we actually lost money on the venture.
So then the manager had the brilliant idea to hire a new wave of interns for free. He figured since we had lost money by paying the interns last time, if we didn't pay them we'd come out ahead. So he went ahead and hired 5 more interns than there were developers (I think it was 12 devs, and 17 interns). This was an unmitigated disaster, because with so many more interns the logistics of managing them all was ridiculously inefficient. And since they were unpaid, all the good interns who knew they were worth money wouldn't take an offer, so we got the bottom of the barrel desperate interns who were even worse than the first batch.
Then on top of that, he flat out said that he wouldn't give the interns any of the "bitchwork" that interns are supposed to do. He was afraid that if we gave them menial tasks, they would get bored and leave since they had no real attachment to the company; so he gave all the bitchwork to the full timers, and the really interesting architectural work to the free interns.
The architects left first. All 4 of them. Then the senior developers left, and finally most of the junior developers (including myself) left. When I left I was one of the only 3 fulltime devs left at the company, and our intern numbers had ballooned to 20. They still maintain a high number of unpaid interns to this day, and I'm frankly amazed how they manage to stay in business. I heard they lost most of their contracts due to the sudden inexplicable shoddiness that appeared in our product. I guess they stay afloat due to the fact that they don't pay salaries anymore.
No, you broke something that was previously correct.
the overall cant of the regulations is that legitimate internships actually constitute organizational deadweight
Seems to me that for an internship to be educational to the intern, she needs to be doing something useful. Otherwise, how is it different from doing one's class work?
Even if the intern is doing something that otherwise would not get done, she is still producing value, so is not dead weight.
Don't try to out wierd me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you, free with my breakfast cereal. --Zaphod Beeblebr
I don't think it's only "very, very few people" who get caught up in scams; they're quite widespread in a lot of areas. Here, a large number of people are told that this is the only way to break into an industry, and if enough of them believe it, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Man, not sure how I misread that whole comment.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The IRS wants it cut and likely they should be getting min wage or more. Same thing for SS, FICA, Sate TAX, and more.
I have a graduate degree and several years experience in my field and, like many others, am having difficulty finding work. I've had numerous people, including one or two professionals involved in hiring, tell me that that as a last resort in this economy I should offer companies my labor for free. Simply as a way to get my foot in the door, and if nothing else as a way to gain some more experience. Considering the amount of time, money and effort I've put into my education and work over the years I found this suggestion somewhat insulting, and after reading this article I would have to presume any company engaging in it would be breaking the law.
It's a lot easier to check for unpaid workers than make sure that the unpaid workers are really interns.
Reboot macht Frei.
No, for a healthy economy, you need output of stuff that people want. Period. It has nothing to do with jobs or small green pieces of paper. If you can find people willing to do the work for free, unpaid, that's good for them (by virtue of the fact that if it wasn't, they wouldn't be asking for it), and that's good for their employer who has just lowered a cost of production. There is absolutely nothing wrong with unpaid labor and everything wrong with penalizing the people who seek it out.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
But what "the populace wants" isn't necessarily what is good for them. Many people will insist on smoking, but surely it isn't good for them. What you are ignoring is an even greater context of individual rights in which societies and governments operate. A person may choose to smoke, however a person may not demand that no person shall work below a certain rate, to enforce that requires violence. An initiation of violence is unacceptable since no crime has been committed in an entirely voluntary transaction between someone wanting to work for free and someone offering that position.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
Typically in the fall we'll take on a couple juniors as interns, unpaid, and have them work on opensource projects to see what they are made of and whether or not they'll fit in with the company. If they do, they spend their next 3 semesters as paid interns working on our products and usually have coded their way into a job when they graduate.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Societies do not operate within a "greater context of individual rights". Societies are groups of humans that have produced and are collectively participating in homeostatic societal memes. Such a society becomes a self-interested, self-preserving agent (super-organism, if you will), in its own right, and as such, it interacts with and constrains the behavior of its members.
A cell in a body is constrained by its relationship with adjacent cells (by being in the body in a certain role). Its location and movement and behavior is constrained. But overall, being in such a body was better for the survival chances of the cell's ancestors, than being alone in the wild, and so it is for the body cell.
Substitute "person" for "cell", and "society" for "body", and you've pretty much got the essence of the mutually constraining, yet mutually beneficial relationship of individual people to their society.
Now, a certain libertarian political position would hold that this relationship I described is not optimal, and that the society is not a "reified" individual agent, but rather nothing more than the sum of its people.
But the thing is, a society entity doesn't really care whether you think it exists, unless you threaten its existence. At that point, it punishes you for crimes (which are technically defined as actions against the lawful order of the state, not against other individuals), or for insurrection or treason, in the most serious case. Those laws and punishments are part of the homeostatic immune system of the society entity. If you transgress at a lower level of intensity, merely by flouting the acceptable norms of behavior that the society inculcates in its people, you may simply be outcast by the society (shunned or ridiculed or shamed or unsupported by its conforming members until you decide to shit yourself out of that society.)
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
When you look at yorself in the mirror, I want you to understand that that line --
"at the same time I get some free labor "
-- is what makes you a bad person.
Yes, your conscience should bother you about this. Pay your people the wages they deserve. Don't exploit them just because they're desperate in a lousy job market.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Companies should pay their interns, but at least in the State of Washington teaching students are required to do a year of student teaching which is unpaid/free. I guess the rules for the private world don't apply to the Government entities...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
That's a damned good point... the higher the wages, the more tax dollars for the government to collect. So the gov't has a vested interest here.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
There is a paradox at work here. In fields like software development, a person can not become productive (and therefore valuable to an employer) without on the job experience. And so there is a skill level at which people can contribute nothing, but can not advance to the next skill level without doing the job for real, which they will almost certainly screw up, costing the employer money.
Given that such a skill level exists, this is a "tragedy of the commons" scenario. It is advantageous for employers as a group to hire lots of interns, so that it is easy to enter the profession, thus increasing competition and bringing wages down. But for any one employer, there is no benefit to hiring interns, who don't do any useful work.
http://xkcd.com/756//
"If you're working, then yes, that work is something for which you should be paid." Damn uneducated grammar Nazis... But on a philosophical note, if you choose that you're fine with not being paid, why is the government coming around making you do something you don't want to do? Isn't my willingness to work for no cash my bargaining chip? After all, the experience I would get is probably worth more than $8/hr, otherwise, I would make an intelligent decision and go work for $8/hr.
Just what we needed, more regulations making it harder to prove oneself and gain work experience. Minimum wage laws shut young people out of jobs that could lead to the top with no cost other than hard work (leading us to rely on colleges to do all of our training at great cost). Ever hear of those guys who worked thier way up from being a dishwasher to president of a company? Those days are gone, thanks to minimum wage laws, and now you can't even become an unpaid intern to get a foot in the door, and expand your resume.
These types of idiotic laws are what are causing minority communities to fail. It's like taking the first five rungs off of the corporate ladder. Now you have to buy your own ladder to even get in at the lowest position, meaning that only the rich and the heavily subsidized can make it in this world.
Thanks nanny state!
Even if it weren't a universal truth, of course a society does, your "market homeostatic mechanism" has decided that it exists, read the Constitution and the Deceleration of Independence. We call it "liberty," "individual rights," "fundamental rights," or "unalienable rights" depending on who you ask (among other terms). Though, it follows that everyone has the free will, though not the right, to do whatever they are physically capable of doing (initiating violence) because everything operates within the greatest context of the physical universe.
We recognize that everyone owns themselves (otherwise we could exercise free will over other people). In the context of our society, cells don't own themselves, nor do planets, plants, etc. By extension we own not only our body but whatever we produce or lay claim to, and can further do things like voluntary exchange.
All your explanation does is try and justify why whatever happens, happens, as if whatever choices we make don't matter to overall prosperity or individuals ("in the long run, we're all dead") and in that sense isn't very insightful. I find it rather shallow too, the best I can do is compare the massive failure of society until the 18th century and failure around much of the world today to produce prosperity, and the rise of brutal dictatorships, to the spread of cancer in a body. At the best it explains society, but that's just sociology, it doesn't effectively tell us what will happen or say anything about choice and consequence. (I would say it has to do with interest rates and protection of property and rule of law, these things were nearly non-existent under feudalism and when the church banned loans with interest, saying it was exploitation, and only Jewish bankers could make loans with interest. Today loans with interest are banned under Islam and the most industrialized Islamic country is... Turkey.)
My point is that if you care about the decisions people make, and about alternatives, and you can rank those alternatives, then you can logically conclude with those axioms what will maximize prosperity among individuals - individual rights, from which you can further deduce laws of economics, minimum wage hurts production which increases costs, unemployment, and real prices, for instance.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
While it may be that minimum wage hurts production... etc., it also helps prevent enormous wealth polarization. Too large a wealth polarization, and society will develop instability which will result in revolution, terrorism, massively increased policing costs etc. Not only that, but stable business ventures based on enforceable contracts are based largely on trust existing at many levels in society. As polarization results in a general loss of mutual goodwill and trust, the climate for business, trade, and specialization of economic process in general breaks down.
What my hypothesis says is that the simplest and most explanatory economic models will be those which posit as the interacting self-interested, compete-cooperate-decision-making, moral, intelligent agents, not only individual human persons, but rather persons and also reified law-based or meme-based human social groups, including corporations and states.
The math of cost-benefit will work out much better and ultimately simpler if it is understood that the economic / trading / conflict interactions are between all these agents, with partial inclusion/allegiance relationships existing between some, and formation of a new group-entity with identity and coherent interest and action being one of the possible strategies open to other agents.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
The question is whether they really want to be unpaid or if unpaid work is just something they have to bend over and take in order to have a career. If the system effectively requires those new to the field to work without pay for a time, it is certainly not for the new workers' benefit, yet those defending the unpaid work keep on claiming that it is.
(IANAL)
IIRC, a SCOTUS case dealt with a trainee program run by a railroad company where prospective rail workers would essentially do simulated work, supervised by actual rail workers. SCOTUS ruled that their arrangement did not require pay, and listed the fact that it was simulated, not real, work as a necessary condition.
(IANAL)
You would be right if all companies followed the rules but many do not hence the article.
Well, no kidding. Thanks for the refresher on the purposes of journalism.
The upshot is that interns can force them to follow the rules in their own cases by filing a complaint with the Department of Labor, which they will win. You want to talk about organizational deadweight? Try DoL fines, penalties, and compensation for the "intern." The intern is already not going to be getting school credit, so the risk they run is to give up a position of valuable slavery. Some like it, some don't, and most of the time it's the employer who likes it and the "intern" who puts up with what they think is a necessary evil.
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.