Cash or Course Credit? Department of Labor Updates Guidelines for Unpaid Internships
Cash or Course Credit? Department of Labor Updates Guidelines for Unpaid Internships The designation between “employee” and “intern” can be a tricky one for employers. Depending on which you’re hiring, you may need to dole out wages and overtime pay. But new changes rolled out by the Department of Labor (DOL) this January could help clarify the dividing line and give employers more flexibility in crafting new positions. Since 2010, the DOL has touted a six-factor test to determine if workers could be considered employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). However, this month the DOL updated their policies to reflect a more commonly accepted methodology: a “primary beneficiary” test, which, as one might guess, focuses on whether the intern or the employer is the “primary beneficiary” of that relationship. The former six-factor test was a strict one which required that all factors be met for a position to qualify as an internship; if not, these interns would be considered employees, and therefore entitled to minimum wage and overtime pay. This was widely considered to be a hard standard to meet, and it became a problem for many employers as a result. Several courts adopted the primary beneficiary test as an alternative method, with the Second Circuit leading the way in Glatt v. Fox…