Only a rich guy who’s never had to worry about money or career prospects could ridicule unpaid interns who realize they were taken advantage of.
CNN’s highly paid anchor Anderson Cooper brushes aside labor laws and tells people who were treated like slave labor in the entertainment industry to suck it up.
Cooper is talking about two unpaid interns who worked for free on the very profitable movie, “Black Swan.” The pair decided to sue the producers because they feel they should have been paid.
This from a New York Times story by Steven Greenhouse:
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Manhattan, claims that Fox Searchlight Pictures, the producer of “Black Swan,” had the interns do menial work that should have been done by paid employees and did not provide them with the type of educational experience that labor rules require in order to exempt employers from paying interns.
It’s difficult to know if they’ll prevail in court, but on the surface, it looks like they have a strong case.
I’ve written extensively on this growing trend of adults who are out of school working for free for for-profit companies. In this economy, workers are desperate and they’re buying into a warped notion that working for free, beyond doing so for charities, is a smart career move.
Cooper makes fun of one Black Swan intern in particular who’s in his 40s and must of known exactly what he was doing. Yes, he did. He was being taken advantage of. The intern with an MBA was essentially a free accountant for the movie. Why didn’t the producers hire an accountant for real pay?
Free internships make sense if you’re a student looking for school credit, and I’m all for volunteering for nonprofits. Something I’ve done often.
Beyond that, here are some guidelines from the government on how they’re supposed to work.
The Department of Labor Wage and Hour division has six criteria on when an unpaid internship is considered an internship and not in violation of labor laws:
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.
September 30th, 2011 at 12:35 am
Ugh - he is so smug here. I hope those interns and all other misclassified workers are successful. People are being taken advantage of whether they want to break into a new industry or just find a job to survive.
September 30th, 2011 at 12:53 am
If you agree to intern for free, you have no right to sue later. I am not a rich guy who’s never had to worry about money or career prospects. I am just someone who believes in honouring a contract.
September 30th, 2011 at 6:58 am
I’m all for people honoring contracts, but unfortunately this may be an illegal contract. The laws protecting employees were put in place in part because sometimes workers don’t make the best choices or have bad decisions foisted upon them. They work in unsafe conditions, they get docked pay or are demoted for getting pregnant, and they often become slave labor to for profit companies. Why? Because they need a job. Smart legislators have realized this and that’s why we have labor laws in this country.
September 30th, 2011 at 10:17 am
Hey Eve,
Not defending Anderson Cooper’s attitudein the segment, but this internship listing for his show Anderson Cooper 360 for the fall 2011 semester is revealing. http://bit.ly/nLv8fy CNN offers their interns minimum wage in addition to course credit.
An unpaid internship offers a way for companies to skirt the labor laws. Students have brought into the ethic because they want work experience. And colleges and universities have gone along with it as a way of giving their students a leg up in the job market.
In a tight market, whose responsiblity is it to see students are actually getting an educational experience? Seems the schools need to step up a little and make sure the internship actually matches the description. Here’s a Facebook description for a current Fox Searchlight (the Black Swan) internship. http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=2204064704&topic=1429 Doesn’t mention coffee.
October 6th, 2011 at 12:53 pm
I think the segment was funny, but then, it’s supposed to be funny.
I agree with the unpaid interns in suing because they were slave labor for no experience, but I also agree with Cooper’s point that they could have spent their time making valuable contacts. Mostly I agree with Kay, in that if they agreed to work for free, suing now that the movie is long past production and into the long life of an Oscar winner, it’s stupid to sue now.
I’ve done two internships, both for grad school, and both paid, and they both did teach me life skills. One taught me about building MySQL databases from scratch in Access, and the other was actually a real job in a communications department managing schedules, budgets, and content. But I do realize that I was lucky, and had major connections to get those internships.