by Tiffany Logue
News editor
In college, students are given the option to do internships. While they are helpful, internships are not always legal.
In April 2010, the U.S. Department of Labor published a fact sheet giving the public a better description of internship rules under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
The fact sheet contains a test to decide if the student falls within the criteria for employees set by FLSA.
According to the Catholic University of America’s website, in the Supreme Court case Walling v. Portland Terminal Co., the Supreme Court “identified six characteristics of the trainees’ work that removed it from the scope of ‘employment’ under the FLSA.”
According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s website, these six characteristics became the text:
“1. The training is similar to the training that would be given in an educational environment.
2. The training is for the benefit of the interns.
3. The trainees or students do not displace regular employees but work under their close observation.
4. The employer that provides the training receives no direct advantage from the activities of the interns, and on occasion the operations’ progress may actually be slowed down.
5. The trainees or students are not necessarily entitled to a job after the internship.
6. The employer and the interns understand that the interns are not entitled to wages for the time spent in training.”
If all six of the criteria apply, the intern is not an employee in the mean of the FLSA which means they are not a real employee.
According to a The New York Times article published in April 2010, “In 2008, the National Association of Colleges and Employers found that 50 percent of graduating students had held internships.”
The article also mentioned that “some experts estimate that one-fourth to one-half” of those internships are unpaid.
According to the Catholic University of America’s website, employers have problems meeting the third and fourth criteria.
They say “It stands to reason that if an employer must consistently assign employees to supervise interns, the interns are incapable of displacing those employees.”
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, “the FLSA also allows students to apply for a student-learner certificate” which they take as a class from a university.
Several departments at Southeastern give students the option to enroll in an internship class.
These classes allow students to receive credit for their work, thus making the internships legal.
While some SE students may receive payment and college credit for their internships, not all interns receive both.
Three departments that offer internship classes are communication, safety and criminal justice.
According to Dr. Wayne Jones, occupational safety and health department chair, the way the class ensures the internship legality is by having the intern send a weekly report telling the instructor the duties the preformed each day.
The communication department’s internship class professor is Dr. Lacinda Brese-LeBron.
Brese-LeBron’s class is similar to the safety department’s. However, along with an intern progress report, her students’ employers must send intern evaluations.
“The way my class works is reports,” Brese-LeBron said. “(The supervisor) gives me their opinion on the intern’s strength, weaknesses adn performance overall.
“I encourage supervisors to give (detailed evaluations) although I don’t always get them.”
Internships can be beneficial both to employers and employees as long as they receive either payment or college credit.