For-profit Employers Are Legally Required to Pay Interns

Interns should be paid – not a popular idea, right? However, according to U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), for-profit employers must pay interns.

In accordance with the position of the DOL regarding the issue of unpaid interns, the Department has said that interns working for non-profit employers may not receive payments. However, for interns working for for-profit employers, payments should be given unless otherwise specified criteria are accorded by the employer.

Criteria for For-profit Employers

The following are determined criteria that should be met by for-profits employers in order not to be required to provide payments to interns:

1. The internship must be in accordance with the actual training provided in an academic environment.
2. The program must be for the benefit of the intern.
3. The for-profit employer obtains no immediate benefit from the tasks being done by the intern.
4. The intern should work under close supervision of the employer’s staff rather than displacing a regular employee.
5. The intern is not necessarily entitled to a job position in the employer’s company upon conclusion of the internship program.

The issue regarding paid internship is relatively new; hence, only few interns know their rights under employment laws. However, it is a different case for two men who became interns for the movie “Black Swan”. According to reports, Alex Footman and Eric Glatt filed a lawsuit against the producer of the said movie, Fox Searchlight Pictures, for not providing payments during their internship.

Although unpaid internship is considered a widely accepted practice in the film industry, it may still be in violation of the employment laws in the country. According to the lawsuit, Footman served as a production intern, but the only tasks he performed was to prepare coffee, to ensure that the coffee pot is full, to distribute meal orders for the production staff, and to take out the trash and clean the office.

In legal sense, Fox Searchlight did not meet the criterion: “the internship must be in accordance with the actual training provided in an academic environment,” hence, Footman has a claim for an employment lawsuit.

In the case of Glatt, he served as an accounting intern for ht movie. According to reports, he was responsible for preparing documents for purchase orders and petty cash. He also traveled to the movie’s locations to get signatures on documents.

The tasks performed by Glatt may entitle him to get payments from the movie producer because he worked without under close supervision of a regular employee.

If you are an intern for a for-profit employer and you believe that your employer did not meet the criteria provided by the law, you have the right to file an employment lawsuit.