It’s happening again. In spring
2010, Obama’s Labor Department was flexing
its muscles extra hard over supposedly exploitative employees
who didn’t pay their interns. Now, once again the unpaid
interns of the world (and their various supporters and legal
support) are rising up, revolting and trying to make a case that
they are being used by employers who overwork them, don’t provide a
“real educational experience,” and of course don’t pay them a
salary. Basically, the Board of Labor needs to fix this problem in
some way or another. Even though
there are already rules in place which cover unpaid
internships:

The following six criteria must be applied when making this
determination:

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; and  6.
The employer and the intern understand that the intern is not
entitled to wages for the time spent in the internship.

One former intern in particular, notes The New York
Times blog, would like to turn her work experience into a

class action lawsuit:

In her lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan,
the intern, Xuedan Wang, and her law firm are asking to make the
case a class action on behalf of what they say are hundreds of
unpaid interns at Heart Magazines, which also publishes
Cosmopolitan, Seventeen and Good Housekeeping….

The lawsuit against Hearst states, “Employers’ failure to
compensate interns for their work, and the prevalence of the
practice nationwide, curtails opportunities for employment, fosters
class divisions between those who can afford to work for no wage
and those who cannot, and indirectly contributes to rising
unemployment.”

According to the lawsuit, Ms. Wang, who graduated from Ohio
State University in 2010, was an intern at Harper’s Bazaar from
August 2011 to December 2011 and said she generally worked 40 hours
a week but sometimes as many as 55 hours. Her lawyers said that Ms.
Wang, with a degree in strategic communications, coordinated
pickups and deliveries of fashion samples between Harper’s Bazaar
and fashion vendors and showrooms and assigned other unpaid interns
to help carry out the pickups and deliveries….

“Unpaid interns are becoming the modern-day equivalent of
entry-level employees, except that employers are not paying them
for the many hours they work,” said Adam Klein, one of the lawyers
for Ms. Wang. “The practice of classifying employees as ‘interns’
to avoid paying wages runs afoul of federal and state wage and hour
laws.”

Basically, Wang says she was treated like an employee but
without the benefits or the salary. Hearst counters that their
interns are told about employment conditions in advance and they
offer academic credit. While musing this lawsuit, please note this
May 2010
New York Times article which has a whole bunch of
anecdotes from interns who did or didn’t feel like their unpaid
tenures at various places were worth it. That sounds about
right.

Yes, it’s true that sometimes people can’t afford to work for
free. Or they get screamed at, overworked, all the cliches must
ring true for some poor sap somewhere. Journalism internships
are particularly notorious for being unpaid (Reason is, of
course, an
exception!). 

And yes, I once wanted to intern for The Oxford
American. And even if they hadn’t declined (I’m assuming that
was due to my tragic case of Yankee-itus), I wouldn’t have been
able to work all summer in Arkansas without getting paid for it. I
applied just for the hell of it.  Requiring them to pay me or
any other intern would —obviously — have simply funneled money
the magazine could have spent elsewhere. Maybe then they would have
had to hire only one intern, or cut a staff position, or ya know,
just not hire any interns at all. 

Commenters, feel free to joke about imminent class-action
lawsuits for hat tips not given.

Read Tim
Cavanaugh and
John Stossel on the hullabaloo over unpaid internships back in
May’10.