According to the case filing, UMG “did not provide academic or vocational training,” yet the plaintiff “regularly worked between forty and fifty hours a week,” performing tasks such as “stocking drinks, delivering mail, organizing storage rooms, delivering packages across town, working with retailers, calling retailers to check on advertising displays and inventory, and attending promotional events for artists.” The case filing goes on to allege that the interns were not reimbursed for travel expenses, and that they often worked overtime.
To be clear, this lawsuit represents “all unpaid interns who were employed by the Defendants within the State of New York” any time within the last six years.
There has been precedent for such cases: Warner Music Group recently settled with its unpaid interns, and ICM also settled with its interns to the tune of $725,000.00. With UMG receiving their summons on April 21st, the lawfulness of unpaid internship programs is sure to be under increased scrutiny.
As I do with many issues relating to the legalities of the music industry, I asked John Simson for his take on the matter. As a professor at the Kogod School of Business at American University whose students are required to have at least one industry-related internship for his Business and Entertainment major, his take was pragmatic. “There have been a slew of these [lawsuits]” he recently wrote to me. “Unfortunately, they hurt current students who need to earn credit in legitimate, substantive internships—but I do know the process has been abused over time.”
This is a decidedly thorny issue: on the one hand, internships can provide both vocational training and academic credits. On the other, large companies have routinely hired people who aren’t enrolled in classes (new graduates, for example) but simply want the job experience.
Matters recently shifted when, in 2013, A federal District Court Judge William H. Pauley III ruled that “Fox Searchlight Pictures had violated federal and New York minimum wage laws by not paying production interns.” Ruling in favor of two unpaid interns on the set of Black Swan, the judge “forcefully called for following criteria that the Department of Labor has laid out for unpaid internships.”
In the wake of that ruling, we have seen more and more of these lawsuits, including the aforementioned suits against ICM and Warner Music Group, as well as a case brought against Atlantic Records reported by the International Business Times less than a week after Judge Pauley’s ruling.
When asked for a statement on this particular suit, UMG declined, citing company policy not to comment on pending litigation. [Forbes]
