Image credit: Miranda Martin
Back in the summer we ran an article about the vexing labor conditions that young workers are often condemned to enter by virtue of simply having some aspirations to get a leg up in this world. One of the key pieces to the puzzle of why the normal channels of advancement are actually subverting this movement is the unpaid and underpaid internship, as documented in Ross Perlin’s excellent book Intern Nation. For readers of the book, or anyone who has been an intern recently, the content of Xuedan Wang’s claim against Hearst Magazines is unlikely to be that surprising. While an intern at Harper’s Bazaar, a fashion magazine owned by the Hearst Corporation, she was not paid, even though she was in fact working what amounted to a full time job. This, argues Wang and her lawyer, is in direct violation of federal and state wage and hour laws.
However, what is surprising and very encouraging, is that Wang and her lawyers have filed papers in Federal District Court in Manhattan to bring a class action lawsuit against Hearst Magazines. As Steven Greenhouse reported yesterday in The New York Times:
“Unpaid interns are becoming the modern-day equivalent of entry-level employees, except that employers are not paying them for the many hours they work,” said Adam Klein, one of the lawyers for Ms. Wang. “The practice of classifying employees as ‘interns’ to avoid paying wages runs afoul of federal and state wage and hour laws.”
Media is one of the key industries that are heavily dependent on the skills, ambitions, and compliance of interns. Thus any attempt to interrupt their role has the capacity to further destabilize the already tottering publishing industry, as Jeff Roberts suggests. (Also, see the comments on the Melville House blog for a growing list of testimonials.)
These challenges to the perverse labor conditions that became naturalized over the past few decades are worth paying attention to in light of the Occupy movement and other attempts to redefine the conditions of work in the 21st century. Some are going to come in more familiar forms like Wang and her lawyers’ attempt to build solidarity amongst interns through legal channels, and some are going to come in unfamiliar forms, like April Wolfe’s piece on the indigence of the new poor. In whatever form they come they are welcome, so sound off below in the comments section with your own testimonials.
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