Are unpaid internships illegal? (employees, extension, 2013, employer)
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as the article (but not the headline) says, a lot of them are, but not all of them. there are several conditions that make them legal and they are only rarely met.
I was amused by the footnote at the end of the article... it was written by someone who had done 3 unpaid internships himself. I did 4 of them myself, in 2 different fields, and have no regrets whatsoever.
I was amused by the footnote at the end of the article... it was written by someone who had done 3 unpaid internships himself. I did 4 of them myself, in 2 different fields, and have no regrets whatsoever.
I did a couple of them myself way back when. Those experiences were very helpful for getting my foot in the door for my first real job.
often one has no choice but to do unpaid internships because the paid internships within the field are very competitive. I say if you can afford going unpaid for a bit then do it, that may be your only foot in the door
I remember when I was first offered an unpaid internship, when the economy was booming! I told them I'd get back to them but secretly cursed them under my breath. But again, the economy was good at the time so I had options after college.
as the article (but not the headline) says, a lot of them are, but not all of them. there are several conditions that make them legal and they are only rarely met.
People in this country really are stupid, and some of the comments in articles on this ruling point that out. This was not an "activist" court making up law. The court was enforcing the law AS WRITTEN! There are rules for unpaid internships and it appears as though the studio wasn't even close to following them. I'm not sure what they plan on basing their appeal on. Are they going to go before the appeals court and say "This isn't fair, we can't afford to pay minimum wage. Besides, these people are happy to work for free.". The fact that they even fought this in the first place shows they got bad legal advice. They should have just paid the guys off and hoped they kept quiet.
The Fair Labor Standards Act sets forth the following six criteria for an unpaid internship to be legal:
1. The internship, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to training which would be given in an educational environment.
2. The internship experience is for the benefit of the intern.
3. The intern does not displace regular employees, but works under close supervision of existing staff.
4. The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern; and on occasion its operations may actually be impeded.
5. The intern is not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the internship.
6. The employer and the intern understand that the intern is not entitled to wages for the time spent in the internship.
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They are perfectly legal if you follow the rules, but that means the employer is basically using their resources to teach someone, like an extension course at a college. They tend to get busted when they abuse the system by trying to get free work out of people. All of our internships are paid, at $15-30/hour and for us it's worth it to help people gain experience but at the same time actually get some work done. Hire a temp and they may get minimum from the agency but still costs us close to $20/hr so interns are not much more and we get better qualified people.
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