A Supreme Court case from the 1940s prompted the Labor Department to lay out a six-part test employers must meet in order to have unpaid workers. (The DOL used to call them “trainees” but changed the language to “interns” in April 2010). Among the requirements: The internship has to be similar to training in a school, it has to be “for the benefit of the intern,” the intern doesn’t displace paid workers and the employer “derives no immediate advantage” from the intern’s activities. In other words, the internship’s goal is to train and teach the intern, rather than to provide free labor for the employer. If the employer doesn’t meet those six criteria, it is supposed to pay the intern minimum wage or better.
As I understand it, many unpaid interns work for the government as well as private business. I’m sure the Trumps are as horrible as we all imagine, but I’d like to hear about an unpaid internship that actually does meet these six criteria.
All this adds up to, IMHO: Try a little harder for something substantive for your next anti-Trump item.
This. Being an unpaid intern typically means that someone else – a trust fund or your parents – is footing the bill. So the rich kids “start at the bottom” with the knowledge that a year or two of “paying their dues” will get them onto the ladder for top jobs. And everyone else gets shut out.
Only it gets worse, because in the past 10-20 years companies have realized that they don’t even have to follow through on the implicit devil’s bargain. They can just offer the unpaid internships and then ditch the suckers for another crop.
Even when my mother’s company participated in a mentoring program where high school kids would come to her business and work a few hours after school, she always paid them at least the minimum wage even though she could’ve just called them interns. She never had unpaid interns. Because, as you state, it’s basically slavery.
No passes for Ivanka. She’s a full and willing participant in the Trump family scams, including lying to and fleecing investors for their many failed condo ripoffs, where they wine and dine people to extort their life savings, then tank the project and run off with the dough.
I don’t know why…maybe it’s the story about surviving as an unpaid intern being demanded by the rich woman not paying…that plus the whole unsavory Trump thing…I’m really repulsed by this blatant using, enslaving of people glammed up into semi-acceptability.
After decades of running my own business and paying my employees, I returned to school to finish my degree. The school was pushing internships for all the students, and I was shocked to find out that around 90% of them were unpaid. Now, besides that fact that that violates my view that one should get paid for working, a once unquestioned notion, it also has the effect of limiting experience in many fields to those who can afford to go to someplace and work without pay for 3 months or a year. That has the effect of shutting out people from less wealthy backgrounds.
Unpaid apprenticeships should be outlawed. (Except perhaps for non-profits?)
The speech Ivanka gave at the convention was enough for me! The absolute shame of promoting her father who has disparaged women,Immigrants and minorities sickened me. The woman is educated she reads she understand words. Ivanka is money hungry like the rest of her family. Do we want these people in the White House??? Get out the vote in your community. nothing they say or do will stop the zombies from voting for them.Help get out the Vote!!
An artist friend of mine in his 60s, who had originally been trained as an engineer, returned to school to learn to repair high tech diagnostic equipment in hospitals. This was around 2010 when the government offered retraining programs after many people lost their jobs during the recession. The program was really vigorous and lasted two years. When he completed the training, this 60+ year old man with an engineering degree found no paying work in the field – but was lucky to snag an internship at a major hospital in our area. He worked there full-time FOR FREE for over two years, before the hospital found the funds to hire him as a full time employee.
EDIT: The hospital is technically a non-profit, but a major medical center in Seattle. They certainly had the money to hire my friend and his immediate superiors desperately wanted to, but for some reason, it took that long to fund the position. Really bizarre – I could not wrap my head around the fact that this highly intelligent, skilled person was forced to work for free for so long to secure a job. He was lucky in that he and his wife already were home-owners who could live off their equity during this time.
