Interns continue to put the legal squeeze on the employers they work for, asserting they are actually employees entitled to be paid the minimum wage. And the next dominos that may fall are social media websites that cater to and put young people to work.
Just yesterday a federal district court in New York ruled that current and former Gawker Media LLC interns may join plaintiffs who claim the news and gossip aggregator violated federal and state minimum wage laws by not fairly compensating them for their work writing, researching and editing blog posts and other content.
The interns fired a broadside against the company, suing under the Fair Labor Standards Act and New York state’s wage and hour law and seek to fold in interns who work on site at Gawker locations and those who do their work while telecommuting.
According to the interns’ complaint, Gawker relies on employees whom it labels as “interns” to create, manage and promote the content on the Gawker Weblogs. These “interns” work numerous hours, sometimes full-time and sometimes par-time, creating and managing online content and performing other work at the behest of Gawker, and did not and/or do not receive any monetary compensation at all, or are underpaid for their work. The named Plaintiffs and the members of the FLSA Collective, the New York Class and the Telecommute Class were labeled “interns” by Gawker but were actually employees under applicable federal and state labor laws, the complaint alleges.
Check back here for more developments in the case.
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