How the Labor Department’s new rules will interfere with the rights of contract and free association.
John Stossel
Reason.com
5/6/2010
Do you employ unpaid student interns—college students who work in exchange for on-the-job training?
If so, President Obama’s Labor Department says that you’re an exploiter. The government says an internship is OK only if it meets six criteria, among them that the employer must get “no immediate advantage” from the intern’s activities. In fact, the employer’s work “may be impeded.”
Impeded? No immediate advantage?
I’m in trouble, then. I have an intern at Fox Business News, and I’m getting immediate advantages from her work all the time. I’ve had interns my whole career and gotten lots of immediate advantage from them. Occasionally, I’ve been impeded—but the better interns did the research that made my work possible. I’d asked my TV bosses to pay for research help, but they said, “You think we’re made of money?”
So I asked colleges if students wanted internships. Many did, and from then on I got much of my best help from unpaid college students.
Did I exploit them? Obama’s Labor Department says it’s hired 250 new investigators to catch exploiters like me. I tried to get the department to answer my questions on tonight’s FBN show, but it declined.
The article continues at Reason.com
