If you’ve ever worked an internship, or know someone who has – you’ll hear one of two things, either the experience was great and a perfect foot in the door, or that one felt overworked and was never truly compensated for their efforts.
The latter was certainly the case for a lad named Justin Henry who filed a class-action lawsuit against Warner Music Group, accusing the company of being exploitative, seeking payment for the months of unpaid full-time work that he’d performed for the label, which saw many other disgruntled Warner interns join him in seeking their own piece of owed pie.
As Reuters reports, the former interns have had their day, with Warner Music Group Corp agreeing to pay over $4.21 million to hundreds of interns for their time spent working for free under the Warner umbrella.
Henry’s original claims challenged the Fair Labor Standards Act and New York Labor Law, which stated that unpaid internships must exist for training purposes and employers may derive “no immediate advantage” from the work provided by interns.
He stated that he worked five days each week from 10 a.m. until 5 or 6 p.m., but was sometimes required to stay later, running his work week above 40 hours, in addition to that, he said there was no academic or vocational training as part of the internship.
Warner said they are glad to have reached a settlement on the case, stating, “We continue to stand by our internship program as an invaluable educational experience for students looking to obtain hands-on, real-world training.”
There’s been a myriad of lawsuits filed over intern pay after a landmark decision was made back in June 2013 where a court ruled that Twenty-First Century Fox Inc should have paid interns that worked on the film, Black Swan, starting a domino affect that saw Comcast Corp’sNBCUniversal pay $6.4 million, Condé Nast for $5.85 million, and Viacom Inc a whopping $7.21 million to interns.
