It's a Week for Good Court Rulings

This one is a ruling that an unpaid internship must be an educational experience for the benefit of the intern, not an unpaid job:

Yesterday, a federal judge issued the first major ruling on the illegality of unpaid internships in recent years, challenging a rise in corporate reliance on uncompensated workers.

Judge William H. Pauley III ruled that Fox Searchlight Pictures violated U.S. and New York minimum wage laws by not paying two production interns for work done on the set of the movie “Black Swan.”

Pauley ruled that the interns had essentially completed the work of paid employees – organizing filing cabinets, making photocopies, taking lunch orders, answering phones – and derived little educational benefit from the program, one of the criteria for unpaid internships under federal law. Pauley also ruled that the plaintiffs were employees and thus protected by minimum wage laws.

“I hope this sends a shockwave through employers who think, ‘If I call someone an intern, I don’t have to pay them,’” Eric Glatt, one of the plaintiffs, told ProPublica. “Secondarily, it should send a signal to colleges and universities who are rubber-stamping this flow of free labor into the marketplace.”

It should also be noted that unpaid internships serve to keep poor people out numerous professions, because they cannot afford to work for free.