UPDATE BELOW
There’s been an endless stream of career advice the past few months encouraging workers of all ages to become unpaid interns, especially those who are out of work and desperate to find work or retrain themselves.

This advice has been making me a bit nervous.

First off, slavery was supposedly abolished in this country long ago. Not to mention the fact that if we all start working for free what incentive do employers have to pay anyone? They’d probably even bring back jobs that went to China and India because, even though they’re practically not paying citizens over there, free here would be much better.

And there’s never a guarantee you’ll actually get a job at the place where you intern. We’ve all heard the saying: “Why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free?”

The problem with some career advice lately is that the people writing about careers aren’t journalists and they largely are not labor law experts. A journalist is going to ask the hard questions when some trend is sweeping the nation and hopefully not just spew out advice without thinking or doing a tiny bit of research. A few so-called career experts are jumping on the latest crazes and hoping they get a following. This is dangerous.

I am being a little hard on career experts. A couple of employment attorneys and even an official at the Department of Labor scratched their heads when I asked: “Is it legal to have a non-student do an internship for a profit-generating company?”

I called the labor department’s Employment Standards Administration yesterday and the nice women on the phone said, “That’s a great question. I’m curious to. I’ll get right back to you.”

Well, it’s a day later and no call.

So, I decided to look at the guidelines online myself and not wait for a real human being.

It’s amazing how clear the regulations are regarding unpaid internships and when they’re permissible. The key is figuring out if an intern is an intern, or really an employee. It all depends on what type of work the person does for an organization. If it turns out a company is actually just using a person as free labor that’s a no no.

Here are the details:

The Wage and Hour Division has developed six factors to evaluate whether a trainee, intern, extern, apprentice, graduate assistant, or similar individual is to be considered an employee. If all of the following six factors are met, then an employment relationship does not exist:

1. The training is similar to what would be given in a vocational school or academic educational instruction;
2. The training is for the benefit of the trainees or students;
3. The trainees or students do not displace regular employees, but work under their close observation;
4. The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the trainees or students, and on occasion the employer’s operations may actually be impeded;
5. The trainees or students are not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the training period; and
6. The employer and the trainees or students understand that the trainees or students are not entitled to wages for the time spent in training.

Now, there is nothing wrong with taking an entry level job, or getting paid less than you’re worth while you gain valuable training in a new field. Maybe that’s what some people are calling internships. But a true unpaid internship is defined narrowly under the law.

Read the six points carefully again and figure out if you’re actually an intern or just slave labor.

UPDATE:
Finally, the labor department spokeswoman got back to me. Here’s a statement from the DOL regarding my question- Can someone volunteer (unpaid intern) their services at a for-profit company in order to gain new work skills?

The Wage and Hour Division enforces the basic federal law which requires payment to workers employed in the U.S. – the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The FLSA requires that all covered non-exempt employees be paid no less than the federal minimum wage for all hours of work, and time and one half their regular rate of pay for all overtime hours (generally hours worked in excess of 40 in a week). Generally, a situation involving a person volunteering his or her services may result in an employment relationship under the FLSA (thus entitled to minimum wage and overtime). Each individual situation needs to be looked at separately. For example, a person cannot “volunteer” his or her services to a private employer to perform the same type service performed as an employee. Trainees or students may also be employees, depending on the circumstances of their activities for the employer.