If you have been offered an unpaid internship and are jumping at the chance to get some experience under your belt, you should be aware that the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) has something to say about it. There are multiple stipulations associated with the ability to legally contract with unpaid interns, and if the company does not meet all of them, they must pay such trainees.
FLSA requirements for an Unpaid Internship
The FLSA criteria are unflinching: All six of the following requirements must be met in order for a company to offer an unpaid internship:
- The training involved must be comparable to that which would occur in a vocational school. In best-case scenarios, a training program will be developed with specific goals designed to help the intern gain qualifications for real-world work. Although operational tasks and duties might be part of the internship, a classroom and/or educational setting should be a part of the training involved. Ideally, the training would go hand in hand with coursework and credit or certification of some kind.
- All training should be designed to be for the primary benefit of the intern. Duties should provide necessary and marketable skill development.
- Interns cannot be used in lieu of regular employees. Rather, they must work under close supervision. Presumably, they would assist regular employees with critical work, but would not be entrusted with the responsibility for such tasks on their own.
- Employers should derive no particular or specific immediate benefits by having interns on the premises, and, in fact, may actually experience some degree of slow-down in processes or outcomes for a period of time, as employees’ time will be split between training and their regular responsibilities.
- Interns should have no guarantee of future employment with the company at the end of the internship. A written agreement stating as much should be a part of an internship agreement.
- Both the intern and the employer must have a common understanding that wages will not be a part of the agreement. A written contract must stipulate that the training will occur with no expectation of or intention to assign wages in exchange for any work done by the intern.
Ultimately, when courts are asked to examine the legality of an unpaid internship, they tend to consider who the primary beneficiary in the arrangement is. If the intern gains substantially from the training experience, it could legally be deemed a trainee experience, and salary is not required. If the employer is the primary beneficiary and gains through the intern’s work product to a substantial degree, the intern must be viewed as an employee, and compensation is required.
Have You Been Taken Advantage of?
If you unwittingly agreed to an unpaid internship without realizing the legal requirements of such an arrangement, you may be feeling mistreated by the employer. Legally, you may have a case. Was your unpaid internship in Sonoma County, Mendocino County or Lake County California? To examine the possibilities, contact the experienced employment law team at Beck Law P.C., in Santa Rosa to schedule a confidential consultation.