SCHOOL INTERNS SLAVES NO MORE
In 1865 the
13th Amendment to the US Constitution outlawed slavery. In 1938 the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act set a
minimum wage for all employees. In 1964 Title
VII and New York’s Human Rights Law protected paid employees from harassment and discrimination based on age,
religion, sex, among others and with the passage of ADA law from discrimination
based on disabilities including pregnancies.
Employers were cautious about blatantly violating these laws and
lawsuits abound where discrimination is discovered. That is except for student interns.
Student interns have been
unable to seek any such protection since they are not technically employees
because they work for free. Many college
masters programs in speech, PT or social work require their students to
participate in internships. These are
our children who believed they are so lucky to get unpaid internships in their
fields of employment. Yet at times,
those internships are not so ideal. When
an unpaid intern in New York sued a Chinese news company, Phoenix Satellite
Television, because, she said, a supervisor had groped and assaulted her; a
federal judge dismissed her case. Since she was not paid for her work, the law did not view her as an employee under Title
VII. The same thing happened in 1997,
when an intern at a psychiatric hospital claimed that she was urged to join an
orgy and to strip naked before meeting with a doctor. The courts threw out her sexual harassment
claim because she was not paid. The same
was true for minimum wage rules; students were not deemed employees in the eyes
of the law.
NEW
PROTECTION FOR INTERNS
