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3 Illegal Things Your Employer May Be Doing

In some cases, unethical business practices are the reason there are laws that make those particularly scummy things illegal. And sometimes, changes in culture or complaints about ongoing unethical treatment cause certain practices to shift from being just unsavory to actually against the law. And in some cases, the problems are so large that they cost employees millions of dollars each year. Hiring unpaid interns The question of whether it is illegal to hire unpaid interns has always been clear in the law, but until only recently was largely ignored by many creative industries. Overseen by the Department of Labor, the act says that for-profit companies can only use unpaid interns if they meet six specific criteria. Of those standards, the internship has to mimic the kind of instruction the person would receive in an educational setting, and the employer must not receive any immediate advantage from the activities of the intern. The clarity for the public at large about the law — including unpaid interns themselves — came in the form of a few recent lawsuits. A former intern at Harper’s Bazaar sued the magazine in 2012, saying that her long unpaid hours allowed the company to avoid hiring another staff.