Department of Labor’s New Guidelines on Internships and What They Mean for Your Association
In January of this year, The Department of Labor announced that they are changing the way they determine the difference between interns and employees, specifically adopting a more flexible seven-factor test to determine if an intern is, in fact, an employee under the federal government’s guidelines. Unlike the DOL’s past assessment, where an intern was considered an employee unless each of six criteria was met, under this new test the DOL has stated that no single factor is a determiner.
So, what does this mean for your association?
AssociationsNow.com called upon Julia E. Judish, special counsel at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP to break down what associations need to know about these new federal guidelines.
In the AssociationsNow article, Julie states, “Associations have an option that is not available to for-profit employers and that is that nonprofits can have volunteers and do—they have lots of volunteers who do substantive, important work, and that’s not true of for-profit employers.”
She goes on to explain that associations can continue to offer unpaid internships as long as they are truly treating these individuals as volunteers. If an association is paying interns in some small way, then they can no longer be treated as a volunteer and must be paid employee wages, amongst other things.
Click here to read the original article and learn more about how this new regulation could benefit your association and how to make sure you avoid any legal risks.
