In a struggling economy, many post-graduates have no choice but to take on unpaid internships in hopes of later landing employment.
Aside from the lack of money and risk of being exploited, unpaid interns may also face the possibility of not being legally protected from sexual harassment, as is what allegedly happened to one young woman who is now suing her former company.
Bloomberg Businessweek reports that Lihuan Wang, a former unpaid broadcasting intern at the New York office of Phoenix Satellite Television U.S., filed a suit against the Chinese-language media company back in January. Her supervisor and bureau chief, Liu Zhengzhu, allegedly invited her to lunch with several co-workers before asking Wang to accompany him to his hotel room to grab a few things. While inside, Wang claims that Zhengzhu took off his jacket and tie, puts his arms around her and told her how beautiful she was, trying to kiss her and squeezing her buttocks.
Wang says that she left the room after pushing him away, but when she later asked Zhengzhu about future job opportunities, he asked her to accompany him on a trip to Atlantic City.
Because she was an unpaid intern at the time and not officially an employee, Wang could not bring her claim under the New York City Human Rights Law. While local laws can protect interns, they are not covered by Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, state or even city laws. Phoenix denies that Wang ever worked for their company or even applied for a position, though she is still suing for failure to hire.
While the New York City Council has had many opportunities to amend the law, they have yet to do so.
"I am not at all surprised by Judge [Kevin] Castel's ruling," Jones Day attorney M. Carter DeLorme, who is representing Phoenix, told Bloomberg Businessweek.
According to ThinkProgress, the vulnerability of unpaid interns has been written about since at least 2010, though little has been done by legislators to make progressive changes. Unpaid interns have also been recently filing lawsuits demanding pay for their labor, and while several have been dismissed or settled, many are currently in progress, including a lawsuit by Dajia Davenport against Elite Model Management for $50 million "on behalf of unpaid interns who worked for the modeling agency since February 2007."
An increasing number of interns are suing their "dream companies" for at least minimum wage compensation.
