According to my newspaper...
“For young people trying to get a foot on the career ladder, internships offer valuable experience.”
“But lawsuits are mounting that claim the often unpaid positions violate U.S. labor laws, prompting experts to call for changes.”
“In March, media and entertainment company Viacom Inc. agreed to pay $7.2 million to end a class action lawsuit by former interns.”
The Smartfella is trying hard to understand this development. It looks to him that... A person needing experience in a particular field agrees to work as an Unpaid Intern in order to gain experience in that particular field. After working as an Unpaid Intern the, now Ex-Unpaid Intern, sues because his former Unpaid Intern Position was Unpaid.
Enter the U. S. Department of Labor to clarify this confusion. The Department executes its clarification responsibilities flawlessly by stipulating this flawless stipulation, “The work must be educational, beneficial and supervised and that the employer derives no advantage from it.”
This is very helpful & the Department of Labor is to be commended but the Fella has a problem with, “the employer derives no advantage from it”.
This means that the business must go to all the trouble of Educating the Unpaid Intern & Benefiting the Unpaid Intern & Supervising the Unpaid Intern but, after all that is done, There Is To Be No Benefit Derived to the Business.
Planning ahead, in order to prevent finding themselves back in court defending themselves against charges as to whether or not they did Derive Benefit, businesses ought to become pro-active & hire Cubicle Chaos Creator Interns who would go into cubicles during bathroom breaks & do things like... break pencil points, disassemble ball point pens & hiding their several parts in several trash cans throughout the workplace, empting desk drawers into other desk drawers, etc.
No lawyer could possibly argue in court that the Business Derived Benefit from such activities... Or could they?
Would I kid u?
Smartfella
Lagniappe: Once the Cubicle Chaos Creator has been created will his creativity naturally evolve into?...
I hope not.
