<p>I have read many students on CC doing unpaid internship, and many employers are taking advantage of it. I never gave it much thought until I tried to help my daughter's friend to try to get an unpaid internship at a law firm. My sister, a stick in the mud lawyer, told me that they can't hire any unpaid intern unless it can be counted toward credit at their school.</p>
[quote]
Since the students have no expectation of being paid and are happy to be in a training program, many employers assume that the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) is not relevant to this arrangement. That assumption is not necessarily correct. </p>
<p>The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) never mentions interns, or defines what an intern is. But the law does distinguish between an employee and a trainee. Many interns qualify as trainees, and therefore arent covered by the FLSA. But not all of them qualify. The Department of Labor uses a six-factor test to determine who can legally be considered a trainee. All of the following criteria must be met, according to the DOL:</p>
<p>The training is similar to what would be offered in a vocational school;
The primary benefit of the program is for the trainees;
The trainees dont displace regular employees;
The employer gets no immediate advantage from the trainees activities (and, on occasion, the employers operations may actually be impeded);
The trainees arent guaranteed a permanent job at the end of the program; and
Trainees understand beforehand that they arent entitled to wages.</p>
<p>Simply put, if the employer does not receive any immediate benefit from the work done, and it is the intern that benefits from the arrangement, the intern can legally be considered a volunteer rather than a paid employee. To keep compliant, the focus of an internship program should be on mentoring and exposing interns to real-life experience, rather than on getting them to produce a certain amount of work.</p>
<p>In sum, even though a so-called intern or trainee may not be expecting to get paid and may be glad to work just for the experience and possibility of future full-time work, there could be a situation where they are deemed employees under FLSA if the employer derives immediate advantage from their activities such as when an intern performs work that would otherwise be performed by the employers regular employees.</p>
<p>Yep, that is true. The company must pay the intern or the intern must receive credit from the school </p>
<p>One of the problems that D’s friends Dartmouth run into is that the school does not give credit for internships. So D’s friends who was looking to do Publishing/PR/Television internships which are usually unpaid, and it is hard to get a job in these areas without an internship, could not get one because the school must give credit.</p>
<p>Oy vey, I hope it’s legal…because if it’s not, you’re going to have a lot of college students hanging out at 7-11 this summer…there are NO paying jobs so they better be permitted to do unpaid internships…</p>
<p>edit: and many colleges will not give credit to rising sophomores…</p>
<p>My S’s school also did not give credit. If an internship mandated it, they had something called “R” credit (no idea what that stood for) which they would put on the transcript. WAs basically meaningless, as far as I could tell. But satisfied the internship sites.</p>
<p>A good friend of my son was a U.S. Senate intern for a semester during high school. She was paid about 10K for the semester, and was provided full room and board. Daily classes and tutoring were provided as part of the package. In her case, at least, it was not unpaid.</p>
<p>My D was a state department intern, she got nothing whatsoever. No course credit, no money, no worthwhile experience. She would have been better served taking a minimum wage job at a fast food operation.</p>
<p>Since then my vote is always: get paid. </p>
<p>Unfortunately I am not absolute monarch of this household.</p>
<p>Until recently my company did unpaid internships. Then the lawyers heard about it and they proclaimed all internships must be paid. $11/hour is our going rate, as a matter of fact. I’m in the middle of interviewing right now. I got 54 resumes for one slot. Poor kids.</p>
<p>Slightly off topic…the first candidates I called were the ones graduating next month. When they heard it was an internship and not a real job, they told me “thanks, but no thanks. I want something beyond the summer.” What a shame. “Foot in the door” still means something, especially in a recession. (We allow grads in internships as longs as they say they are considering grad school.)</p>
<p>In a few weeks, my daughter will start her third unpaid internship. If there’s a law against it, it’s certainly a law that’s widely ignored.</p>
<p>It’s even ignored by our Congressman. The internships in both his district offices and his DC office are unpaid. (This is not where my daughter is going, by the way, it’s just something we discovered along the way.)</p>
<p>When did all of this start to happen? Back in the stone age when I was in college, interns weren’t paid a cent. The rich kids got to do internships. The rest of us got summer jobs so we could afford to buy our books and our bus tickets back to school in the fall.</p>
<p>My son is interested in journalism and had an unpaid internship with our local newspaper last summer, but did have to get his school to agree to give academic credit. The paper also had some paid internships but he applied too late for those, and, as it turned out getting 3 credits out of the deal is better in some ways than the bucks. But the paper was very specific that he could not do an unpaid internship unless he got academic credit for it - said it was a legal thing.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, all of the paid internships at all newspapers have gone away this year. He hopes for an internship with a large company in our area in the communications department, which would be paid.</p>
<p>My son worked for the government in family law here in Florida last summer, as an unpaid intern with no credit. My daughter, a magazine journalism major, worked for a magazine as an unpaid intern, and also for a newspaper as a paid intern, both without credit. I’ve never heard anything about any of those not being legal.</p>
<p>My first internship wasn’t paid. It was part-time as well. It wasn’t even that long- only about 5-6 weeks, only about 20-25 hours a week I think. But I was SO thrilled to be working at that internship that I would do it for free anyway! I was also just a rising sophomore so I could understand why I was given this kind of internship. I enjoyed my workplace and my colleagues too much to moan over the lack of money. I was even willing to sleep on the streets of DC just to have this.</p>
<p>But afterwards, I re-applied to the same place but for a different internship. Since I had been there before, I got excellent referrals and ended up with a cushy paid internship. I felt right on top of the world with this one- that my job seemed to be even better than the Hill interns. My boss was extremely adamant about me being paid- even though I didn’t exactly finish some of my projects and offered to finish them at no cost. He said, “No, I wouldn’t feel right if you worked on those projects and not get paid for your time!” I didn’t have time anyway… but they’re still my projects as far as I know so I can go back to those. I also had fantastic networking opportunities and it basically set my path for the future.</p>
<p>Honestly, for some kids, if there’s an unpaid internship with an institution or company or government office that they absolutely want, they’re just going to do it, whether the law likes it or not. For some, it’s valuable experience. Well-planned internships usually compensate for low pay with extra and careful training for the internees so they’re ready to hit the ground when they actually enter in the job market- Investment banks used to do this. The trick is to recognize which companies are looking for cheap hires and which companies are looking for serious potential employees in their industry down the road.</p>
<p>Also, not to mention that many LACs don’t give credits for internships because it’s “professional experience”. doesn’t contribute to their liberal arts education. Hurmph.</p>
<p>I worked for a major financial institution, and we often had college students who would come in and offer to work for free doing an internship to get experience and a foot in the door. Since the work they would do was work that we would normally pay for, our legal department said no. I’m sure the reasons were more complex than what I’ve stated, but the bottom line was we didn’t have unpaid interns.</p>
<p>midmo – sounds like your son’s friend was a Senate Page and not an intern. The Pages are provided with a salary and housing and attend school (before work) at the Page School.
Unpaid Congressional interns are common in legislative offices.</p>
<p>Undpaid intern in the non profit world = volunteer. Are there laws that limit the hours per week that someone can volunteer?</p>
<p>I am familiar with situations with unions or formal work/layoff rules that might prohibit someone doing unpaid work that someone had previously been paid to do.</p>
Poor kids.</p>