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|| SportsShooter.com: Member Message Board
Adding an Intern to your Staff This Summer?
John Lariviere, Photographer
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Tigard | OR | USA | Posted: 7:30 PM on 06.12.13 |
->> If you are adding an unpaid intern to your staff this summer, beware that not aligning the internship "for the benefit of the intern" can come back to bite you like it has with Fox Entertainment > http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/interns-win-huge-victory-labor-566...
Bringing on interns to fill staff vacancies or augmenting staff benefits the employer more than the intern. Make sure your internship is focused on a learning experience for the intern. One measure of correct emphasis may be that your own productivity actually goes down because your focus is on teaching and mentoring, leaving less time to get your own work done. Providing real world work experience as part of the internship is great, it just can't primarily benefit the employer. The Fox article notes the six criteria the Labor Department states an internship must meet in order for it be designated as an educational internship.
I sponsor interns in my company and love the opportunity to be a part of a person's professional development. If you have an opportunity to do so, I would highly recommend investing yourself in the growth of your profession's future. |
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Robert Hanashiro, Photographer
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Los Angeles | CA | | Posted: 2:08 PM on 06.30.13 |
->> Search "Intern Diaries" in the Sports Shooter Newsletter archives for lots of stories about internships.
The debate over the ethics of unpaid internships in any profession is extremely tough and complicated... |
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Mark Loundy, Photo Editor, Photographer
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Doug Pizac, Photographer
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Sandy | UT | USA | Posted: 4:37 PM on 06.30.13 |
->> Now that I'm also teaching and helping students find internships there is another criteria that may become a factor -- the number of hours the kids work as "unpaid" interns in exchange for course credits.
Some companies are accepting free interns ONLY if they get course credit thereby taking them off the hook for not paying the kids. But here is the kicker that could come back and bite the companies. A full course load is normally 15 credits -- essentially 40 hours per week of education. So if a student earns 3 credits for an internship that is equivalent to 8 hours of work per week. (3 is 20% of 15; 8 is 20% of 40) So theoretically, the IRS and labor department could deem hours worked beyond the 8 as primarily beneficial to the employer -- especially if the interns are working 60 hours which some do.
And with these unpaid internships that are linked to their educational value the employer must set aside time to mentor the students, critique the work, etc. so it is a learning experience. Just giving out assignments with no valued feedback could be deemed a violation and put the companies on the hook for back pay.
This may be related to a major magazine in the middle the ruckus taking on unpaid interns and allegedly refusing to do a write up on their performance to their colleges so they can get the course credit. |
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Ting Shen, Student/Intern, Photographer
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Chicago | IL | U.S. | Posted: 5:02 PM on 06.30.13 |
->> "Just giving out assignments with no valued feedback could be deemed a violation and put the companies on the hook for back pay."
Do I have a valid suit here while experiencing this during my time at the "Chicago major daily paper whom fired all their photojournalist"?
hmm. |
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Scott Serio, Photo Editor, Photographer
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