Slashdot Mirror
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."
It's not the judge's job to defend the internship concept.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
If you have to pay interns like regular employees, what's the point of hiring interns?
Because some of them are good enough that you will want to employ them later but you can't really tell which ones from a conventional interview.
Personally I think no-one should be employed for zero pay, interns are not slaves.
The "point" of hiring interns is to provide them with an educational experience. That's why you don't have to pay them - because they show up primarily for their own benefit and provide few, if any, benefits to the host organization. People who show and do valuable work for you are called "employees," and the thing about employees is that they have a legal right to be paid. Once upon a time, businesses understood this and hired seasonal workers (students on summer vacation) for a small salary. Nowadays every imbecile thinks that an "intern" is a source of free labor. Wrong.
If you want free labor and you're a for-profit business? Screw you. We have minimum wage laws for a reason. You are not allowed to make a profit off of someone's labor and not pay them. "Internship" is not a code word for "someone I can't be bothered to pay."
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?
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Unpaid internships are a huge crutch perpetuating class divisions here in the US. I wonder what will change now that rich kids no longer have the advantage of being able to say "I'll work for free."
An internship should clearly be:
- For a well-defined project;
- For a limited time;
- Paid (at a basic level);
- As much work for the employer as it is for the intern.
If you're not mentoring your interns heavily, you stand no chance of developing a talent pipeline. I wrote about my experiences with an internship program here: http://www.altdevblogaday.com/2012/04/18/lessons-learned-from-training-interns/
The critical aspect is that you have to have the available bandwidth to mentor and supervise an intern. You have to give them clear goals and a clear chance to succeed.
Unpaid internships have always been very restricted according to labor laws. It has always been the case that many companies in the entertainment and publishing and fashion industries were breaking the law. What is new is simply that a few former interns got fed up enough with their treatment that they are ratting out their unethical non-employers ;-)
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? Because as a society we long ago decided that slavery was immoral. Why don't we allow people to contract themselves into a period of indentured servitude? Because as a society we long ago decided that indentured servitude was immoral. Why don't we allow people to work for profit-making corporations without being paid for their labor? Because as a society we long ago decided...
Note that unpaid internships are legal in 2 broad circumstances: first, of course, working for a non-profit entity, second where the intern is being trained and not performing immediately useful work for the company.
There are plenty of paid internships out there already. The paid internships are actually much more likely to get the student a real job after college, too. Also remember that the students are still paying tuition for the credit hours their internship earns them.
We need these jobs that teach kids skills, and/or allow them to start to earn money, and find out what it entails for working a job, dependability and responsibility, and how to manage money.
They can't very well learn to manage money when they aren't earning any.
Minimum wage is so low that any company who wants to grow their own talent can pay it painlessly.
The skilled trades, unlike various Elitist Fuck Corporations, pay their apprentices because otherwise said apprentices wouldn't be able to have food, clothing and shelter.Internships/apprenticeships are increasing as they are the (proven over CENTURIES) way to grow skilled tradespeople.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I hope you get modded up, as your comment gets to the core of the issue very nicely. I just wanted to expand on this:
Nowadays every imbecile thinks that an "intern" is a source of free labor.
Yeah, I run a very small software dev business, and on a couple of occasions I have hired interns for the summer. Of course, as I hope everybody here knows, in our industry interns get paid, and pretty well...
A couple of times, in conversations with friends outside the industry, when this subject came up, there was a total disconnect. They wondered how the heck somebody like me could find interns, and it turned out that their bafflement was because they assumed that by "intern" I meant "unpaid". I was so shocked by this ridiculous assumption that the first time I was literally speechless for a few seconds while I processed the concept: "this person thinks that there are young people who will develop software for a for-profit entity without being paid, wtf...". Then I slowly explained: "no, in this industry employers consider it customary to pay our employees..."
I never understood how companies got away with this kind of stuff in the USA. I'm from Canada, and I've never heard of an unpaid intership happening here. If it does, I don't know why anybody would go for it. In university, we had a Co-op programme which required us to alternate between semesters of school and work. Took a little longer to finish your degree (but only a little bit more, we were either working or in school year round, and work only started after second year). After we graduated, we had 16 months of paid work experience. They didn't pay us as much as regular employees, but it wasn't minimum wage work either. And the co-op coordinators at the school ensured we were doing real work and not just fetching coffee and making photo copies.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
In most societies it would have been illegal to have them working without pay. What to expect does not make that legal. The judge is correct.
If you read the article you would have found out that the "interns" were actually unpaid workers. From the article: "The judge noted that these internships did not foster an educational environment and that the studio received the benefits of the work." The judge correctly ruled that Fox Searchlight Pictures did not followed the criteria laid out by the U.S. Department of Labor. (You didn't even have to read the article - it's in the summary too). The criteria linked above is a good read btw.
It's about damn time the government went after the abuse. It doesn't affect our interns since (1) they are paid a stipend and (2) it is actually educational and benefits them way more than us. We use interns to foster growth in research. The movie industry use interns for free labor.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
If those industries cannot survive without a large pool of free labor, then they should go the way of the dodo.
Well, say goodbye to internships...
Try having a look at a country where this has long been established in law, and you'll find internships are flourishing.
What we've said goodbye to is the exploitation of free labour to do menial tasks that offered no real benefit to the intern. There's a great scheme in Scotland where the enterprise development agency funds internships for students/recent graduates at new startups. There are strict conditions attached to the money, as the internship has to be directly related to a specific project, so that the intern is exposed to the full lifecycle and gets genuine experience to talk about at interview. This gives the businesses the opportunity to take a chance on something new or different, benefiting everyone. (Normally.) In fact, there's a great history of companies taking on their interns after, as these companies are at a stage of rapid expansion.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
I always assumed interns actually performed services in relation to what their field of study is. Fashion students do fashion work like costumes, makeup, jewelry making, etc. Journalism students check facts, review articles, report on local/low importance stories. Other students perform tasks actually related to their future job. And these tasks for all interns include some grunt work such as cleaning up the shop, checking supplies, pumping the bellows at the forge, whatever is needed.
But I don't think anyone goes to college to be coffee-handler or floor-sweeper. If that is the extant of their internship experience, they should be paid like the other employees. Or better, they should report that to their professor/school, and that company should be excluded from the internship choices. When their free labor pool disappears, they will stop abusing the process.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Volunteering at for profit businesses is generally speaking illegal. Calling it something else does not fool the law. I would imagine they have trouble finding paid internships and outside pressure like college credits requires them to do this work.
this doesnt stop unpaid internships.
RTFA.
this stops unpaid interns being used as free labor for activites that cannot be onsidered educational. two film school students being given an internship on a movie and being used as unpaid labor instead of being TAUGHT THINGS. that is the sort of thing being stopped. not unpaid internships as a whole, but those which are simply trying to get free labor and not fulfilling the educational requirement.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
"There are plenty of paid internships out there already"
That's a pretty broad statement that ignores a number of facts, such as:
1) Not every field has paid internships
2) Not every field has internships readily available
3) Not every location has companies nearby willing to take on interns (think small cities and rural areas)
4) Not every paid internship is flexible enough to be viable
5) Not every internship meets the educational requirements some schools have for it to count
You are absolutely correct. Here's an excerpt from a slave owners diary in 1861:
When Dick married Hetty, the Anderson house was next door. The two families agreed to sell either Dick or Hetty, whichever consented to be sold. Hetty refused outright, and the Andersons sold Dick that he might be with his wife. This was magnanimous on the Andersons' part, for Hetty was only a lady's-maid and Dick was a trained butler, on whom Mrs. Anderson had spent no end of pains in his dining-room education, and, of course, if they had refused to sell Dick, Hetty would have had to go to them. Mrs. Anderson was very much disgusted with Dick's ingratitude when she found he was willing to leave them. As a butler he is a treasure; he is overwhelmed with dignity, but that does not interfere with his work at all.
Clearly the slave owning society feel they are being overly generous by giving an education to their property. They even gave him a choice of where to work for free! Your vision of society fits perfectly in line with the Antebellum south. (To be clear, I'm not calling you a racist, you're just pro-slavery which is actually frowned upon in most societies in the 21st century)
Yeah sorry, but no. I've run internship programs in the past, and fundamentally they all serve a single purpose: To ensure that a company can hire the best graduates possible.
Hire an intern. Pay them well. Treat them well. Give them the best training your company can provide. After their 3months -> year placement, send them back to complete their degree knowing far more than when they arrived at your company.
If you do this (and really it isn't very hard), then the intern will usually contact you before they've spoken to any other companies (which means you get the long term pay off). They'll also tell the other students in their year that you're a really cool company (which leads to more CV's arriving in your office), and they'll also tell their lecturers how great you were at training them (which usually means those same lecturers will pass you details on their best students for next year).
the one and only purpose of interning is to have the opportunity to shine. It's difficult to get hired as an employee -- there's a lot to prove and a lot of competition. It's way easier as an intern. And it's the foot in the door. You do have the opportunity to do really well, get noticed, and eventually get hired. And all you need to do is to work for free until that happens. That's pretty swell.
That's the lie they tell you, but don't believe it. They're really just using you. Statistically, in the fields that abuse unpaid internships, those with internships on their resumes get hired after graduation at a rate about 2% higher than those without.
http://www.dol.gov/elaws/esa/flsa/docs/volunteers.asp
If this is the sort of basic facts you do not know, you really should not be discussing this in public.
I offered you a plain donut, you accepted a plain donut, that's the contract. Offer and acceptance. And that would probably be the last free donuts the office got.
Now in plain fact YOU didn't offer anyone a "free donut": the corporation did. This is a critical distinction.
Corporations exist solely by virtue of Nanny State interference in the operations of the Free Market.
This gives corporations--which offer internships--a vastly privileged position in the negotiations they undertake with potential employees, interns, etc.
Again: corporations are a privileged form of social organization by statute (the reforms to the Companies Act in Great Britain in the 1850's, and similar acts passed by parliaments and congresses around the world.) I own a corporation, and when I incorporated I did not engage in free an uncoerced trade with my fellow humans: I filed forms with the government that upon approval gave me as a corporate owner certain legal, state-defined and state-protected privileges that my employees do not have the benefit of.
Advocates of Corporatism like yourself tend to forget this little detail: you as the owner or agent of a corporation have the backing of the massive, coercive power of the State. Your employees do not.
So quit pretending you live in some mythical Free Market where the Nanny State hasn't tilted the scales massively in your favour. Show a little humanity and humility and decency, and remember that what the State giveth the People can damned well take away.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Internships are even flourishing in US industries where paid internships are the norm. I'm in Engineering, and I've never heard of anybody doing an unpaid internship. My alma mater's current statistics say interns in my field from the past year earned between $13 and $38 per hour, and $20/hour on average. (Full-time work after graduation pays $20-$53/hour, $35 on average.)
Supply and demand factors a lot into this - good engineers are usually in demand, and there are many companies that will pay top dollar for both interns and full-time workers. In many industries, though, there is an excess supply of workers relative to jobs. This is how you end up with newspapers that have unpaid internships for journalism students - there are so many people that can do the job that they'll work for free. Similarly, you get people that are caught by the aura of the silver screen; they want to be big-time actors or movie producers, and they see that unpaid internship as their ticket in; but there are far too many of them for far too few jobs. (Especially if you count the labor pool that isn't lured to that particular industry, but is just generally qualified for that line of work - such as fetching lunch and coffee, answering phones, and assembling office furniture, as these interns did. Seems like an appropriate use for an MBA...)
I think the judge's decision as summarized above makes sense - if they're doing real work, they deserve at least minimum wage. If you just want to run them through training classes and exercises, then by all means, they can do no work for no pay.
The reason to hire paid interns is this: they get some money and experience. You get a worker that costs less, and a trial period to see if you like them. If they perform very well, you invite them back for another internship (if they're still in school) or a full-time job (if they're almost done), and bring their increased experience with them. If they perform poorly, then you know not to hire them again. This process is far easier for the employer than hiring somebody only to find out they stink, and then firing them. A sizable percentage of my employer's full-time workers started as interns; and a sizable percentage of interns are invited back for full-time positions.
Unpaid internships are used as a class barrier in many industries. It is simply too expensive for any "lower class plebs" to get into fashion or whatever, because they have to pay cost of living in some place like New York for years on no wage to get a foot in the door.
From TFS:
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."
All this judge did was rule in accordance to existing law - that interns are there to be taught the tricks of the trade, not be your goddamn coffee mule, and if you're going to utilize them as such, they must be paid for their efforts (and rightfully so).
For fuck's sake, guys, learn to read at least the damn summary before you go off on a nonsensical tangent; perhaps you'll learn to think better of it.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I hear similar complaints from businesses all the time: "Employees cost me X amount of money every year!"
In fact, I hear it so often, I've taken to asking them, "Then why do you have any, if all they ever do is cost you money?"
Never have gotten a straight answer...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Unpaid internships are a scam. If the intern isn't doing work worth paying him minimum wage, what's the point of the internship? It becomes a rite of passage instead of on-the-job education.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Is it possible for anyone to have a conversation on the Internet without being a gigantic dick?
"There are plenty of paid internships out there already"
That's a pretty broad statement that ignores a number of facts, such as:
.....
3) Not every location has companies nearby willing to take on interns (think small cities and rural areas)
4) Not every paid internship is flexible enough to be viable
These are one of the biggest advantages of paid internships. The "real" job market doesn't have an XXXX in every podunk town. The "real" job market often is inflexible and not viable for certain careers in certain locations. My university had 2 co-ops as a graduation requirement. I didn't want to stay in Maine anyway, but it forced me to pack my stuff into my car, rent a room for 3 months on Craigslist, and work in a moderate-sized city. It forced me to live independently and handle my own affairs. It eliminated any fear I had about moving cross-country for a job. It reinforced in me the idea that getting a job often has nothing to do with your experience and everything to do with your connections. These are not drawbacks. This is the way the world works. It is invaluable experience.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Unpaid internships are used as a class barrier in many industries. It is simply too expensive for any "lower class plebs" to get into fashion or whatever, because they have to pay cost of living in some place like New York for years on no wage to get a foot in the door.
That is a huge clue to me that the job market for that industry is crap and I shouldn't be bothering with it. In certain industries, there will be 10 people standing behind you willing to do your job for less money and while working longer hours. I have a friend who used to work for a car crash-testing company. The hours pushed 80 hours a week, every week, and the pay was crap. But the company never had to look hard to find someone to work for them. That is not a career. That is a human gristmill.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
I think that analogy over simplifies the problem. The real issue is that the interns were promised an internship which would teach them valuable movie production skills, and instead they were given no training and used as unpaid waiters. The bait and switch is on the type of work they were promised that they would be doing. The company broke the contract and now owes them monetary compensation because they failed to provide the agreed upon compensation (training in the art of movie production).
Fanatically anti-fanatical
But it is the judge's job to determine if working someone without pay is legal or not.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.