Crackdown on illegal internships

With the summer almost here, I've been looking for an internship to fill my free time and my resume. It's difficult finding the right one though, let alone one that pays.

Maybe I've set my standards too high, but I want an internship that is worth my time and doesn't require me to only do grunt work for a company.

Internships are a vital learning experience that every college student should experience in order to land a dream job upon graduation. However, more and more employers are not providing students with an internship that gives them a quality learning experience to further their skills in a their chosen career paths.

Those employers are basically taking advantage of students who are willing to work for free. The Department of Labor (DOL) is doing the right thing by amending the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to include a "test" for employers to use to determine whether they can legally hire an unpaid intern.

The Wages and Hours Division (WHD), a division of the DOL, announced in late April they are going to begin cracking down on employers who may be breaking the law by not paying interns who do not receive an educational experience during the duration of their internship.

WHD says that if an "internship program is structured around a classroom or academic experience as opposed to the employer's actual operations, it is more likely the internship will be viewed as an extension of the individual's educational experience," according to a fact sheet released by the department.

WHD will begin enforcing the changes to the law on employers who do not provide their interns with an educational experience will be required by law in accordance with FLSA, to pay interns $7.25 per hour, the current minimum wage.

This is a monumental change for college students who have spent their days doing data entry, sorting packages or picking up dry cleaning and coffee for free because previously, internships were loosely regulated through the vague and outdated FSLA laws which meant they were essentially unenforced.

Unpaid interns who perform meaningless tasks just to boost their resumes deserve compensation from employers because they are not learning anything that will help prepare them for their future careers. Additionally, there were many gaps in the FSLA laws that interns fell through, these actually hurt the employers who took advantage of them.
These gaps lead to the increase of unpaid internships available to students, making the choice to take an internship not only based on a student's qualifications, but also their economic means.

 Students who cannot afford the cost of living without a paying job are forced to miss out on the learning experiences internships provide.

Another gap interns fall through is that they are left unprotected by workplace discrimination and harassment statues such as the Civil Rights Act, Americans with Disability Act, and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act because they are technically not employees. This is in reference to the 1997 U.S. Court of Appeals case, O'Connor v. Davis, where intern Meghan O'Connor sued Dr. James Davis, an employee of a hospital for the mentally disabled, for sexual harassment. The court dismissed her case because she was not being compensated by the hospital and therefore could not be considered an employee and receive protection under Title VII, Equal Employment Opportunities, of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

These gaps will be solved by the addition of the intern "test" on the FSLA, however it may also have unintended consequences. Employers may begin hiring less interns because they do not want to risk facing legal action from the government. The WHD will need to simplify their test and further provide explanations for employers to discourage this kind of thinking.

Overall, the intern "test" is a great stepping stone towards protecting college students while interning at companies. The actions taken by WHD tell me that my standards are not too high when it comes to finding an internship, because the government has declared that all internships should be fulfilling and worthwhile.

Students who are currently interning or looking for an internship like me should hold their employers to the government's standards and speak up if they don't. Don't just complete meaningless work for employers if it won't benefit you in the long run.