Interns are people that do work for their own educational or therapeutic benefit. Before taking on interns, a cooperative should understand who is considered an intern along with the rules and exceptions specific to them.
Who can be considered an intern?
For-profit businesses can have unpaid interns, so long as the arrangement in which the intern is working meets the criteria for a valid internship. In California and in most jurisdictions, the following criteria are considered in determining who is an intern (also known as trainee or student):
- The training, even though it includes actual operation of the employer’s facilities, is similar to that which would be given in a vocational school;
- The training is for the benefit of the trainees or students;
- The trainees or students do not displace regular employees, but work under their close observation;
- The employer derives no immediate advantage from the activities of trainees or students, and on occasion the employer’s operations may be actually impeded;
- The trainees or students are not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the training period; and
- The employer and the trainees or students understand that the trainees or students are not entitled to wages for the time spent in training.”
The Importance of Being Unhelpful
Most businesses struggle especially with fourth criteria in the internship test, which is the requirement that “the employer derives no immediate advantage from the activities of trainees or students, and on occasion the employer’s operations may be actually impeded.” Some businesses do seek interns for the sole purpose of providing an educational experience, but let’s be real: Most employers hope that interns will also be helpful to the enterprise, and the framing of this law makes that hard. It’s difficult to know where courts will draw the line, and we are left to wonder: can’t an intern be just a little bit helpful? Fortunately, one case decided by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals seems to indicate that intern can be helpful, as long as the intern is the true beneficiary in the relationship. Note, however, that this remains a gray area, and if your cooperative would like to have interns, it’s best to focus primarily on teaching them.
How to Have an Intern
Given the limitations on how interns can work in enterprises, here are some recommendations on how to create an internship program:
- Create a curriculum to accompany the work:
- This helps to meet the requirement that the training be “similar to that which would be given in a vocational school.”
- Implement a systematic training program where interns will be exposed to nearly every aspect of running the business: If an intern is exposed to multiple aspects of running the business, it means that they will not spend a significant amount of time repeatedly doing one task. This helps to undermine any argument that the employer is benefiting from the intern’s work, since the intern never has the opportunity to be that helpful on any one task, and the employer is constantly training the intern in a different facet of the business.
- Limit the amount of time that interns spend doing mindless tasks or work normally done by employees:
- In the case of a farm, for example, an intern should not spend a significant amount of time planting, weeding, or harvesting a field, but may do this work on a limited basis, for the purpose of developing basic skills. It is better to engage the intern in projects somewhat separate from the day-to-day work of the business. This helps to prevent any argument that the intern is displacing an employee.
- Create an affiliation with an educational institution or nonprofit:
- If a business serves as an educational laboratory for school or university students, this helps to create a clearer educational purpose to the work an intern does with the enterprise.
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