<p>A judge has ruled in favor of two unpaid interns who have sued Fox Searchlight, alleging that they performed tasks of regular employees without being compensated.</p>
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The judge noted that these internships did not foster an educational environment and that the studio received the benefits of the work. The case could have broad implications. Young people have flocked to internships, especially against the backdrop of a weak job market.
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<p>Those who frequent these forums know my opinion on this matter!</p>
<p>For those of us that don’t know, what is your opinion on this matter?</p>
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<p>On the one hand, if I came from a rich family, I would gladly pay the company to let me do an internship. But on the other hand, if we’re going to have minimum wage laws, we can’t have unpaid interns.</p>
<p>There are laws governing the use of unpaid interns by for-profit entities. The primary criteria are that the company can get no measurable and immediate benefit from the work, the intern cannot perform duties that would otherwise be performed by a paid employee, and the internship must provide educational value. Yet, somehow, corporations believe that they don’t need to follow these guidelines, so they take advantage of ambitious students by offering unpaid internships. Students then see “internship” and think that they have a ticket to a job in the future; they take this unpaid position, and they think that the company is doing them a favor.</p>
<p>The reality is that many of these “internships” are just jobs that would otherwise be held by paid employees… I can call my car a jet, but that won’t make it fly.</p>
<p>The most popular argument that proponents of unpaid internships make is that if not for the unpaid internships, these kids would be missing out on an opportunity. False, false, false. In some cases, the jobs need to be done, so companies can hire permanent employees (good for the economy in general) or they can hire students as temporary employees (good for the students). In the cases where the job just goes away (the duties of getting coffee and making copies are rolled into someone else’s job), that tells you that the internship wasn’t all that necessary, and the value that students got was minimal.</p>
<p>In short, we live in a country where a fair day’s work earns a fair day’s wage, and companies should not get to skirt the law just because they know how desperate their applicants are.</p>