question is should you be? My name is Adam Gonnelli and my firm handles cases were interns

aren't being paid what they're supposed to be paid. Now when people think of interns,

usually what they think of is a young person going in for college credit doing menial jobs

and learning about the business. And some of that is perfectly fine. What's not fine

is when the intern is actually doing a job that could be done by a minimum wage worker

isn't really learning much of anything and the employer is exploiting the intern, just

to get cheap labor. Now what we look at to determine whether an intern should be getting

paid is a couple of things. First, who's really benefiting? Is the intern there to learn?

Is the intern there to pick up job skills? Or is it really just a case of the employer

getting work for free? Look at it this way: if you can think of it as the intern coming

in and displacing a minimum wage worker (let's say all you do is you run and get coffee and

you do different errands, you do routine paperwork, you're standing at the copy machine) none

of those things are teaching the intern anything and those are all jobs that can be done by

a minimum wage workers. In those circumstances, the interns should be getting paid. Another

factor to consider is who's advantage is having this job? Does the advantage go to the intern

where they're learning things? They're learning about the business, picking up valuable skills?

Or is the advantage all to the employer who gets an employee who's working for nothing?

Now in some cases, even having the intern around may actually cost the employer something

in the short term. The employer may have to take time off to teach the intern things,

the employer may have to make some accommodations to have the intern around, the intern may

need their own office, time may be taken from some of the senior people to talk to the intern,

give the intern learning tasks and so forth. All those things are situations where you

have a genuine internship. Another issue that you look at is whether the internship necessarily

leads to a job or is it something that could be the equivalent for college credit (like

being in a class)? If you're in a classroom, you don't expect necessarily to walk out and

get a job (especially true these days). Similarly, if you're an intern and there's no guarantee

of a job at the end of the internship that's another factor that may mean this a genuine

internship and not a case in where the intern needs to get bad. In short the closer the

internship is something you get in a college environment or a class room; the more likely

it is that it's a genuine internship. The closer it is to a minimum wage job, the more

likely it is that the intern should be getting paid. Now why might you need to know this

information? If you're an intern and you're putting in a lot of hours, maybe you should

be getting paid. I'm Adam Gonnelli and my firm handles cases like this. Thanks for watching

and have a great day!