Thursday, January 23, 2014
Monday, August 26, 2013
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
Are unpaid interns exploited?
Welcome to the Unpaid Interns Lawsuits Website
"Unpaid interns are becoming the modern-day equivalent of entry-level employees, except that employers are not paying them for the many hours they work. The practice of classifying employees as “interns” to avoid paying wages runs afoul of federal and state wage and hour laws, which require employers to pay all workers whom they “suffer or permit” the minimum wage and overtime. Employers’ failure to compensate interns for their work, and the prevalence of the practice nationwide, curtails opportunities for employment, fosters class divisions between those who can afford to work for no wage and those who cannot, and indirectly contributes to rising unemployment.
"According to the U.S. Department of Labor, an unpaid internship is only lawful in the context of an educational training program, when the interns do not perform productive work and the employer derives no benefit. “If the employer would have hired additional employees or required existing staff to work additional hours had the interns not performed the work, then the interns will be viewed as employees and entitled to compensation under the FLSA.”
"The U.S. Department of Labor’s test is not new. It is based on the United States Supreme Court’s 1947 opinion in Walling v. Portland Terminal Co., 330 U.S. 148, 152-53 (1947), which held that the FLSA’s definition of “to employ” as “to suffer or permit to work” does not include student participation in an educational or vocational training program, so long as the employer derives no benefit from the trainees’ work. The Court cautioned against arrangements “in which an employer has evasively accepted the services of beginners at pay less than the legal minimum without having obtained permits from the [Secretary of Labor].”
"Outten & Golden LLP is committed to ensuring that interns are fairly compensated for their work. To learn more about our class action litigation on behalf of unpaid interns, please peruse the information in the case-specific tabs above, or contact us directly.
QUESTIONS:
1. Do you believe that businesses should be allowed to have unpaid interns?
2. If the government requires businesses to pay interns a wage equal to at least the minimum wage, do you think this will help, or hurt, young people?
"Unpaid interns are becoming the modern-day equivalent of entry-level employees, except that employers are not paying them for the many hours they work. The practice of classifying employees as “interns” to avoid paying wages runs afoul of federal and state wage and hour laws, which require employers to pay all workers whom they “suffer or permit” the minimum wage and overtime. Employers’ failure to compensate interns for their work, and the prevalence of the practice nationwide, curtails opportunities for employment, fosters class divisions between those who can afford to work for no wage and those who cannot, and indirectly contributes to rising unemployment.
"According to the U.S. Department of Labor, an unpaid internship is only lawful in the context of an educational training program, when the interns do not perform productive work and the employer derives no benefit. “If the employer would have hired additional employees or required existing staff to work additional hours had the interns not performed the work, then the interns will be viewed as employees and entitled to compensation under the FLSA.”
"The U.S. Department of Labor’s test is not new. It is based on the United States Supreme Court’s 1947 opinion in Walling v. Portland Terminal Co., 330 U.S. 148, 152-53 (1947), which held that the FLSA’s definition of “to employ” as “to suffer or permit to work” does not include student participation in an educational or vocational training program, so long as the employer derives no benefit from the trainees’ work. The Court cautioned against arrangements “in which an employer has evasively accepted the services of beginners at pay less than the legal minimum without having obtained permits from the [Secretary of Labor].”
"Outten & Golden LLP is committed to ensuring that interns are fairly compensated for their work. To learn more about our class action litigation on behalf of unpaid interns, please peruse the information in the case-specific tabs above, or contact us directly.
QUESTIONS:
1. Do you believe that businesses should be allowed to have unpaid interns?
2. If the government requires businesses to pay interns a wage equal to at least the minimum wage, do you think this will help, or hurt, young people?
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
King of My Castle? Yeah, Right - NYTimes.com
King of My Castle? Yeah, Right - NYTimes.com
"The City by the Bay is going through one of its worst housing shortages in memory. With typical high demand intensified by a regional boom in tech jobs, apartment open houses are mob scenes of desperate applicants clutching their credit reports. The citywide median rental price for a one-bedroom is $2,764 a month, but jumps to $3,500 in trendy areas."
"One reason for the shortage? Me.I’ve recently joined the ranks of San Francisco landlords who have decided that it’s better to keep an apartment empty than to lease it to tenants. Together, we have left vacant about 10,600 rental units. That’s about five percent of the city’s total — or enough space to house up to 30,000 people in a city that barely tops 800,000...
"To stabilize rents and prevent eviction abuses that are typical when housing is scarce, the city developed some of the nation’s toughest housing policies. Rent-control ordinances, for example, sharply limit rent increases after the initial lease for most housing constructed before 1979. As a result, many leases morph into lower-rent tenancies for life, subsidized by landlords, even when the tenants are wealthy.
"In addition, a complex legal structure has been created to make evictions for just cause extraordinarily difficult.
Saturday, May 11, 2013
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