Jeffrey Landes, a Member of the Firm in the Labor and Employment practice, in the New York office, was quoted in an article titled "Is The Unpaid Internship Dead?"
Following is an excerpt:
Headline this week about a federal judge's ruling in an unpaid internship case are shining a light on the murky, confusing world of internships and making it clear that in most cases the law requires private employers to pay a minimum wage, even if the interns have voluntarily signed on to work for little or no money. ?...
Because so many people want to get a foot in the door in the film world, for years interns have been willing to do scut work in exchange for proximity to movie producers and talent. But it turns out that arrangement breaks laws that date back to 1938, when Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which includes many of the basic labor laws we take for granted today, like the minimum wage. ?...
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. ?...
Jeffrey Landes, a partner at New York's Epstein Becker Green, which also represents employers, agrees. "We tell our clients that it's not prudent to have an unpaid internship program," he says. "They should pay minimum wage and you could also have some liability for overtime."