How Small Businesses Misuse Summer Interns
By Nina Kaufman, Esq.The official start of summer will soon arrive, and with it, millions of high school and college-age students available to help out in your business. Your eyes sparkle with the thought of getting staffing help at reasonable rates (read: cheap labor), which can give your business the boost that it needs. Good, cost-efficient idea, right?
Not necessarily. Using workers in your business without paying them could run you afoul of the Federal Labor Standards Act, which does not take a kind view of having people work for no pay (slave owners did that, remember?). As the New Jersey Star-Ledger reported, there are six criteria that an internship needs to meet in order to be properly viewed as an internship and not merely as unpaid work:
- The intern must receive training similar to what he or she would receive in a vocational school
- The training must be for the benefit of the intern
- The intern must not be displacing a regular employee — in other words, doing a regular employee’s work
- The employer has no “immediate advantage from the activities” of the intern
- The intern is not necessarily entitled to a job at the end of the internship
- Both the intern and the employer understand that the intern is not entitled to wages (although the student may be able to receive a stipend).
And be especially careful if you are using workers under age 18.To make sure you don’t violate federal and state human right laws, (1) make sure you are working with a reputable school program that understands the appropriate guidelines (don’t just pick up any ol’ student off the street), and (2) double-check with an attorney to ensure that you’re on the right path.
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