Federal Judge Says Interns Should Be Paid

An anonymous reader writes "Student interns are typically relegated to menial tasks like fetching coffee and taking out the trash, the idea being that they get paid in experience instead of money. On Tuesday, Manhattan Federal District Court Judge William H. Pauley disagreed, ruling in favor of two interns who sued Fox Searchlight Pictures to be paid for their work on the 2010 film Black Swan. The interns did chores that otherwise would have been performed by paid employees. Pauley ruled, in accordance with criteria laid out by the U.S. Department of Labor, that unpaid internships should be educational in nature and specifically structured to the benefit of the intern, and reasoned that if interns are going to do grunt work like regular employees, then they should be paid like regular employees." The article seems to imply that this might be the beginning of the end for the rampant abuse of unpaid internships: "Judge Pauley rejected the argument made by many companies to adopt a 'primary benefit test' to determine whether an intern should be paid, specifically whether 'the internship’s benefits to the intern outweigh the benefits to the engaging entity.' Judge Pauley wrote that such a test would be too subjective and unpredictable."

Comments

Re:Genius judge

[I'm New Around Here]

There are jobs that people really, really, really want to do for zero pay. Why wouldn't you allow them to make that decision for themselves?

Why don't we allow people to sell themselves into slavery?

Interns aren't allowed to walk away from a company that mistreats them? Modern slave owners are allowed to whip and kill their interns?

I did not know that.

Another freedom gone

[Kohath]

You used to be free to decide for yourself whether to take an unpaid internship. Now you can't. The internship police won't allow it. Because they know more about your life than you, so they'll be making your choices for you.