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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."
I'm so glad you're here to dictate what peoples' jobs really are or are not.
"Fine. Here's $5000. Now remove from your resume that you interned on Black Swan ."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
An internship I had last year was one of the most beneficial things I received towards my career ever, and now the government wants to kill them off unless they are a one way benefit to the student? An internship is supposed to be a two way benefit, not a charity.
In being fair to the judge here, they aren't the first person to think this. Obama himself made similar statements, a manifesto of sorts, about internships needing to benefit only the student and basically be nothing but a burden to the employer.
If the overall goal here is to harm the future economy, then this is certainly a step in the right direction.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK