I am fundamentally opposed to unpaid internships (you get what you pay for, and frankly I don't want to work with people who value their work as free), but there is an interesting blog post from Mark Cuban about the illegality of free internships: The U.S. Department of Labor has outlined a list of criteria that ALL must be met in order for an internship to be unpaid.

The Dept of Labor outlines what a free internships should entail:

  1. The training, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to that which would be given in a vocational school;
  2. The training is for the benefit of the trainee;
  3. The trainees do not displace regular employees, but work under close observation;
  4. The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the trainees and on occasion the employer's operations may actually be impeded;
  5. The trainees are not necessarily entitled to a job at the completion of the training period; and
  6. The employer and the trainee understand that the trainees are not entitled to wages for the time spent in training.

 

Posted by roy on September 5, 2009 at 03:43 PM in Ramblings | Add a comment

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