Unpaid Intern Lawsuits: What Every Studio Owner Should Know
By now, many studio owners have probably heard about the rise of class action lawsuits against businesses that rely on illegal unpaid internships.
In late 2012, Charlie Rose’s for-profit production company was the first to settle such a claim, paying out $250,000 in back minimum wages that it had failed to pay its entry-level workers. Just last week, Fox Searchlight Pictures suffered a resounding loss in the first of these new lawsuits to make it all the way to trial.
This Monday, a former Atlantic Records intern brought suit against the Warner Music Group, making them the first major music company on the chopping block. Their name has been added to a growing list of defendants that includes prestigious publishers like Condé Nast and Harpers.
These cases are not unique to big businesses. I’ve even heard from a former intern who took a small recording studio to the labor board in California and won the case soundly. That decision is currently in appeals, but it doesn’t look good for the studio owner.
If you haven’t looked into the practices at your studio, it’s time to do so now. This week, we’ll look at what separates a legal internship from an illegal one, and how to make sure your studio stays out of the crosshairs.
A Brief History
To those who have grown accustomed to the presence of unpaid internships, these may seem like new developments. But in reality, laws prohibiting the non-payment of workers have been on the books since the passing of the Fair Labor Standards Act way back in 1938.
Credit: Mikey Burton
It’s only been in the past decade-and-a-half that both prosecutors (and workers) have turned something of a blind eye to the practice.
If you ask the old-timers of the studio world, just like I did, many of them will tell you that back in their day, all the legit studios paid minimum wage to their gophers, general assistants and receptionists. No one had quite the imagination to think they could do otherwise.
It’s true that new workers often lack the skills to be nearly as productive as experienced hires. But for countless generations, training new workers was just considered part of the cost of doing business.
Some time between the late 1990s and early 2000s, all that began to change – not just in the studio world, but throughout the entire creative sector.
Between 1992 and 2008, the number of students entering internships in the U.S. tripled, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. It’s unclear how many of these internships are unpaid, but estimates range from about one-third to one-half.
Regardless of where you stand on the issue, it’s difficult to deny that this dramatic increase in unpaid internships has gone hand in hand with a sharp decline in the availability of paying entry level jobs, a record spike in youth unemployment, and what economists have taken to calling the “jobless recovery” from the Great Recession.
How To Stay On the Right Side of the Law
Not all unpaid internships are illegal, but there’s no question that according to existing labor laws, many are.
As Ross Perlin, author of Intern Nation writes, in 1947, a Supreme Court decision “established a narrow, common-sense exemption for those enrolled in a genuine training program,” but “few internships these days are serious about training, and…most don’t even pretend.”
There are a few ways to make sure your internship program stays on the right side of the law and avoids litigation. Internships that pays minimum wage are no problem at all, so that’s always a safe bet. And at non-profit firms, productive unpaid “interns” can simply be classified as “volunteers,” so there’s often no issue there either.
At for-profit companies however, the bar for an unpaid internship is set very high. In order to remain legal, any unpaid internship must be done for the express benefit of the intern, and the employer must receive no immediate benefit from the intern’s labor.
What exactly is an “immediate benefit”? Simply put, anything that resembles “work.” This includes answering phones, filing papers, entering data, distributing checks, picking up dry cleaning, going on mandatory coffee runs, mopping floors, cleaning toilets, washing dishes, and so on.
Our existing labor laws are not interested in the title we give to our new recruits – only their function. If it looks like a job, sounds like a job and smells like a job, it probably is a job. The law still holds that jobs have to pay, and the starting rate is minimum wage.
To qualify as a legal unpaid internship, the employer must be running something that resembles the kind of hands-on, structured vocational training that one would expect at a school. They must also not profit directly from the work of the intern in any way.
To help clarify the law, the Department of Labor offers a clear six-point guideline for keeping unpaid internships on the up-and-up. Of those six points, Maurice Pianko, an attorney with Intern Justice writes that the following points are the most commonly flaunted:
“The internship, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to training which would be given in an educational environment;
The internship experience is for the benefit of the intern; The intern does not displace regular employees, but works under close supervision of existing staff;
The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern; and on occasion its operations may actually be impeded.”
That’s a pretty tall order to live up to, and it’s doubtful that many unpaid internships at recording studios live up to these standards at all times. In the case of Fox Searchlight, the judge found that each of these guidelines had been violated:
“[Fox] Searchlight received the benefits of their unpaid work, which otherwise would have required paid employees. Even under Defendants’ preferred test, the Defendants were the “primary beneficiaries” of the relationship…
“Undoubtedly, [the interns] received some benefits from their internships, such as resume listings, job references, and an understanding of how a production office works. But those benefits were incidental to working in the office like any other employee and were not the result of internships intentionally structured to benefit them. Resume listings and job references result from any work relationship, paid or unpaid, and are not the academic or vocational training benefits envisioned by this factor.
[The interns] performed routine tasks that would otherwise have been performed by regular employees. In his first internship, Glatt obtained documents for personnel files, picked up paychecks for coworkers, tracked and reconciled purchase orders and invoices, and traveled to the set to get managers’ signatures. His supervisor stated that “[if the intern] had not performed this work, another member of my staff would have been required to work longer hours to perform it, or we would have needed a paid production assistant or another intern to do it.”
If that sounds something like the internship program at your studio, you may be in trouble too.
The bottom line is that if you own a for-profit business and want to run an unpaid internship program, then it has got to be built around a rigorous training program. And if you want to benefit from the intern’s labor, you’ve got to pay them.
Keeping that in mind, there may be suitable compromises that could allow cash-strapped studios the option to give young hopefuls ample real world experience while benefiting from their valuable labor as well.
For instance, you might pay an intern for help to set up and break down at the beginning and end of a session. You could then invite them to stay and observe during the session (so long as they’re off the clock and not expected to be working) or to stick around to ask questions after you’ve wrapped up for the day. At minimum wage, this might cost a studio as little as $20 to $40 per session – A real bargain for an extra set of hands, and a potential win-win for everyone involved.
Similarly, you might actively train an intern in a new task off the clock (such as soldering cables, invoicing clients or printing stem mixes) and then pay them to complete the actual job as contract work.
This may be something of a legal gray area, and you’d be wise to discuss it with your own attorney. But at the very least, it’s a clear step in the right direction compared to the ways in which many studios run their internship programs. If you ever did face a lawsuit, you’d actually have a real case to make in court, unlike Fox Searchlight. But perhaps just as importantly, you might be far less likely to attract one to begin with.
If you’re a young worker and are having trouble finding legal, non-exploitative internships, consider launching your own portfolio-building projects instead. Volunteering at a non-profit is also a great resume padder, and can be a fantastic way to earn real hands-on experience. In many cases, they even offer more intensive hands-on experience than for-profit firms because they need the help that much more. Both of these options can add tremendous value to your skill-set without devaluing the positions you hope to land in the future.
For And Against
We could debate the pros and cons of unpaid internships all day long in the comments section, but that’s not going to change the law.
By now, most of us have heard the stock arguments from both sides anyway. Defenders of unpaid internships say that they can be “A great way to gain experience.” But this only begs the question, “Would it be any less of a great experience if the intern was paid minimum wage?”
The common response here is “Yes, because the position wouldn’t have existed otherwise.” To which the obvious reply is “How do you know? That’s a pretty huge assumption to make.”
Jobs board at the 2012 AES Convention
Some of these lines of reasoning are difficult to resolve in a vacuum. Better perhaps, to look at the hard numbers and see what they say. At this point, those numbers seem to suggest that unpaid internships aren’t actually much of an “opportunity” at all.
Results of NACE’s 2013 Student Survey show that in a study of recent job hunts, 63% of graduating students who had paid internship experience received at least one job offer.
However, the same could only be said for 37% of unpaid interns. This gives unpaid interns a measly 1% advantage over students who took no internship at all.
Graduates with paid internship experience also earned far higher starting salaries than other applicants – By nearly 50%. The median starting salary for new graduates with paid internship experience is now nearly $52,000. This is far higher than their counterparts who had unpaid internships. They were able to secure average salaries just over $35,000. Ironically, even graduates with no internship experience whatsoever did better than the unpaid interns, averaging $37,000 to start!
Critics of illegal unpaid internships say that they destroy entry-level jobs, economic mobility and equality of opportunity. There may be yet another cost as well: A good case can be made that unpaid internships are just plain bad for business, too.
Regardless of whether you think unpaid internships are exploitation or opportunity, one thing is clear: Change is coming. Don’t let it get the better of you.
Please note: When you buy products through links on this page, we may earn an affiliate commission.
SoCAl
June 20, 2013 at 4:03 pm (11 years ago)Unpaid internships are a great way to learn how to make an awesome fruit basket and clean a toilet like nobody’s business. I support these lawsuits wholeheartedly. All the legitimate studios I worked at always paid their employees. We never had unpaid “interns.” If someone was unpaid , they were doing what an internship is actually supposed to be – observing and having the opportunity to learn and ask questions, not running all over town getting my car washed and picking up my favorite sandwich.
N.N.N.N.
June 20, 2013 at 5:17 pm (11 years ago)YES. I support these lawsuits. I had three internships after college, and just like SOCAI said: I learned to clean toilets, buy food and drinks, answer the phone, and more useful skills that didn’t translate at ALL to what I do now (compose and produce and mix music). What DID get to where I am now? Getting paid to work at a studio that took the time to really train me and treat me like a human. In other words: Places that were run by grown-ups, not selfish fools. I rarely got trained. All of the studio engaging in this pathetic practice are embarrassments.
The “Paying Your Dues” thing is a sad excuse for studios to get free labor. Screw you — you didn’t help me in the least towards getting me to where I am today, and I do not treat any of my assistants (all paid, no “internships”) this way in the least. Pay it forward. Studio that engage in this behavior are a big FAIL.
FormerIntern
June 20, 2013 at 5:45 pm (11 years ago)It is interesting that this has come to light, especially since in most educational facilities for audio engineering, the faculty clearly states that your job as an intern is to scrub toilets and say “yes sir” and “thank you sir”, and if you are lucky, you may get to sit in on a session, or power on some gear. Most interns go into their internship knowing that they need to show they are willing to work hard, and display a good attitude. At that point they still only MAY get some beneficial knowledge out of their internship, but their primary function in the studio is to scrub toilets. I interned at three studios. The first one, I performed literally everything listed on this article that qualifies as a “job”, and in return, was allowed to sit in on two sessions in the month that I spent at that studio. The second internship, I did absolutely nothing, and just sat in the control room the whole time while the head engineer ran sessions and made lots of edits. The third was mostly manual labor, and IT work. I cleaned out rooms that had junk building up in them for years, took carloads of stuff to the dump, built shelves, set up work stations, maintained the computers, did tons of installing and registering of software, and countless other tasks that had little to do with audio engineering. I did however get to do a few things like mix some tracks, and make edits on some kids programs we did post for. That third and final internship started as me coming in every day for three months for free, and turned into me coming in once a week, then every other week, then once a month, then never again, but getting paid to do some editing, meanwhile other interns came and went. In total I must have spent six or seven months at that place, and probably only made $300. I struggled to find any kind of gig I could to make a little money to pay my bills and be able to eat, and most of the time I was dead broke and couldn’t pay rent or put gas in my car to get to my internship. Because of my lack of income, I know my health suffered a lot because of the diet I was forced to have, and the living conditions that I could barely afford to maintain were deplorable.
I think the biggest problem is that schools promise you that there is ample work out there, when in fact they are just churning ignorant kids out at a huge profit at those kids expense. Then they’re in debt and have to go work for free for many months, just to eventually be let go, jobless and with no prospects in sight. Out of everyone I knew from school, there are a handful of success stories, but even all these years later most of those whom still work in audio are still struggling, and for many it is simply a side gig or a hobby with expensive training.
I think that it is interesting that at a time when the music industry, film industry, and recording studios are at an all time low, more and more audio-visual schools are popping up, churning out thousands of kids each month, all promising them a fun and lucrative career in entertainment, when nothing could be further from the truth.
Sure, some will succeed. But most will fail and have to return home to the farm and pay off their school debt for years to come while working at Jamba Juice. It is partially their fault though. They didnt do the research ahead of time to see what the state of the industry is in, and what employment opportunities really are like. I admit my guilt in that aspect, which is why I worked hard and came through. I struggled for years barely making enough to get bye, but in the end hard work and never giving up made it happen. Would I file suit against the studios that gave me internships? No, they were getting used to an influx of free labor and taking advantage of it, as anyone would. And I was told that I was signing up to do grunt work for free, so no surprises there. I hold the prospective students responsible for not doing their own research, and the schools for taking advantage of their ignorance, as well as lending programs designed to get kids in debt and profit off of years of accrued interest.
It seems to me that the real culprit is an entrepreneurial educational system offering up training for jobs that don’t exist, and lending programs in cahoots with the schools, guaranteeing maximum enrollment and turn-over.
Anyways, just my thoughts.
This is not my name.
June 20, 2013 at 7:14 pm (11 years ago)I support these law-suits whole-heartedly. I took the safe route – the college degree, and I’ve seen my share of studios taking advantage of free work. However, there’s two MAJOR MAJOR HUGE factors that I’m very surprised weren’t mentioned in this article.
One: Let’s be honest here: It’s an unfortunate fact that if someone was absolutely serious about their career in the recording industry, the worst decision they could make would be to file a lawsuit against a studio. Why? Because they’ll get blackballed: not many studios would want to hire them. Right now, I intern at a major, very busy commercial studio in New York and my internship is 200% illegal. No doubt about it. But if I filed a lawsuit? I would have a bad reputation. And it’s sad. Very sad.
My point being this: the mindset that exists in the recording industry right now (and many others) where it is EXPECTED that you take your lumps, get hazed and deal with it in order to make it in this industry is absolutely appalling. It has to be acceptable for interns to have rights (GASPS!) and stand up for themselves. Right now – it’s not.
Two: Many college programs require that an internship be required to graduate. In this situation, colleges FORBID the studio from paying the intern while at the same time CHARGE THE INTERN (Sorry, I know I’m abusing capital letters right now) tuition dollars to do the internship. If anyone knows anything about the cost of tuition credits right now, you know it’s not cheap. The counter argument for this is normally “Well the school thinks it’s a legal internship”. Ideally, this is true. However of here in the real world, some of the requirements of an internship for college credit it is to – get this: be treated like a paid employee AND be unpaid. I mean, from the point of view of a studio owner this is too good to be true! Imagine 2 people, 22 years old, same resumes, one got their BA, one just needs to do the internship to complete it. A studio owner’s hands are tied in this situation. What sane studio owner wouldn’t want to hire someone to do the same job – just with no pay and no oversight?
So that’s my second point: The blame can also be put on universities that require the student be unpaid and be treated like a paid employee. In a perfect world, universities should really be acting as an oversight – a body that makes sure the student isn’t doing any of the things listed in the article above and that it’s actually….you know….educational.
Bro tooler
June 20, 2013 at 8:12 pm (11 years ago)Weird. I did an internship two years ago at a reasonably large studio with a great room, great desk, great history, great clients, etc, and they hired me after a month because I was smart, willing, worked hard, didn’t smell like a trash can, and had a strong will to be in the recording industry. Now, I work at a much much bigger and better studio due to my diligence and am thankful that I had the sense to always give my best work and keep a reasonably humble attitude about my position.
“These kids who get right out if school as write producer on their business cards may as well have written astronaut.” – awesome ACTUAL producer
Want to get a job in audio; make good choices and enjoy the fact that you’re even in a recording studio. Be cool. Be smart and don’t let people take advantage of you, but know that if you feel entitled to a job that the guy ahead of you worked his ass off to get (for free, for almost a year), you’re probably not getting a foot in the door. Studios don’t make a lot of money now and can’t pay what they used to because people stopped buying albums. Lars was right. Those are my thoughts on it. You don’t work in audio because it’s easy; you do it because you love it hopefully. The money comes later. That’s the real gift.
isawsasquatch
June 20, 2013 at 8:38 pm (11 years ago)Sad that the focus is on those meanies at the big, bad recording studios opening their six, seven, and eight-figure facilities to mostly-useless students with chips on their shoulders to learn a highly-skilled technical job from men and women who’ve dedicated their lives to the art while surrounding them with clients and myriad professional and networking opportunities.
No mention of the hundreds of audio schools churning out grads like hot dog meat, unsuited to even the most menial studio task, promising them jobs as platinum producers while cashing their checks for tuition totaling in the tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars?
Remind me again who the bad guys are?
RecordingReview
June 21, 2013 at 4:21 am (11 years ago)Slave labor is tricky for employees. Ironically, there is no protection for business workers who pay themselves far below minimum wage.
isawsasquatch
June 21, 2013 at 7:19 am (11 years ago)A vote down and no rebuttal? I wonder what part he or she didn’t like. Was it the bit about the colleges overcharging and graduating thousands of young people in their rip-off con scheme? Or was it the bit about the majority of student interns offering little in the way of value to a recording studio? It would be nice to have a discussion; that is, assuming you actually have a point to make and an informed argument to back it up.
Patty O
June 21, 2013 at 9:19 am (11 years ago)I didn’t vote down your comment, but you’re missing the point of the article. If somebody is cleaning your toilets, getting coffee for your clients, or providing any kind of service for you, they are legally entitled to some form of pay.
If all of these college graduates are so useless, then don’t hire them. It’s that simple. And if a six or seven figure facility can’t afford to pay somebody $7.25 an hour to answer the phone, then the owner should probably give up and open up a McDonald’s franchise or something. It’s way easier.
Patty O
June 21, 2013 at 9:22 am (11 years ago)Oh and I did just vote down your comment… ha!
isawsasquatch
June 21, 2013 at 9:36 am (11 years ago)Sweet, sweet revenge! lol
isawsasquatch
June 21, 2013 at 9:38 am (11 years ago)Do you or have you ever held a job (as a working professional or even an unpaid internship) in the recording industry? There appears to be quite a bit of misunderstanding in your reply, which I’d like to address, but I need to know the terms in which I can explain. If you haven’t worked in this industry, I’m gonna have a helluva lot more explaining to do.
isawsasquatch
June 21, 2013 at 9:41 am (11 years ago)I’d also add that you’re missing the point of my comment. I think the ire here is misguided; it is my opinion that the audio schools are most deserving of the majority of whatever blame folks feel the need to place.
TrustMeI'mAScientist
June 23, 2013 at 8:27 am (11 years ago)I can only guess as to the specific reasons for all the vote downs. But here’s what I do know:
Comments that come across as overly negative or include critical reasoning errors seem to get the most downvotes around here.
I could see how the tone of this comment might come across as unnecessarily negative. And I do see at least one major error in reasoning here:
1) You are right to say that some of the less scrupulous private recording schools seem to churn out far more graduates than there are positions for.
However, even the least ethical of the audio diploma mills is still able to advertise fairly high placement rates for their graduates. This helps them bolster applications for admission.
The hidden problem there? Many of the “positions” they place their graduates in are actually *unpaid internships.*
With that in mind, it’s likely that cracking down on unpaid internships would actually *help* to counteract the very problem you’ve mentioned.
So there’s that.
2) I’d also add that some graduates from the very best audio schools are sometimes just as prepared and knowledgeable as some of the old-timers working in the field. Sometimes even more so.
(In particular I’ve found that many young “tonmeisters” from the more selective 4-year audio schools like those at SUNY Fredonia, SUNY Purchase, NYU and Berklee are top-notch, and can give even veteran sound engineers a run for their money.)
Rather than compete with them, the most successful professionals know to enlist their help instead. From a businesses standpoint, if you ever see a person who is real threat to your business, the best thing you can do is hire them.
When studios stopped doing that, it bit them in the ass. (What with all the extremely competent and pleasant young engineers running around undercutting them!) Let’s not pretend that this is not a major problem that many older studios face.
3) Furthermore, I didn’t notice any place where recording studios were painted as “big bad meanies.” So that may have contributed to the downvotes too. Readers at SonicScoop tend to think that recording studios, in general, are pretty neat. Most of them own studios or work in them.
4) And lastly, if a person’s labor has actually been exploited for profit, or if they’re airing a genuine grievance about what they think is a demonstrably regressive shift in the social contract, is it right to suggest that they simply “have a chip on their shoulder”?
You’re entitled to your opinion for sure, but most of the folks who down-voted you would probably debate you on that bit.
And if you think about it, isn’t a comment along those lines a bit like “a vote down with no actual rebuttal” itself?
Unsurprising perhaps, that readers who disagree with you there would respond in kind.
That’s the best I’ve got. Thanks for reading, and for weighing in!
(At least, that’s what went through my mind when I down-voted your comment just now! : )
Very best,
Justin
pppPerryandtheMETS
July 16, 2013 at 9:49 am (11 years ago)I know it’s been 25 days … I understand your point of view. The recording industry is completely different than others, I’ve often counted up the hours I spent working at a facility as a studio manager once and it came out to $2.50 an hr !!! I’ve had interns that thought they knew it all and couldn’t mix an acceptable rough mix, further they could barely mic things up. Often their studio etiquette skills were zero and they could never run a session start to finish. I learned all of these skills as an unpaid intern, I had to compete against others to get that internship (and others) and I was abused as an intern, picked on, mad fun of, left to make mad dashes for the last train, really bad. BTW, as a studio manager I also had the privilege of re-doing what interns didn’t do right including cleaning toilets.
pppPerryandtheMETS
July 16, 2013 at 10:34 am (11 years ago)I know it’s been 25 days … I understand your point of view. The recording industry is completely different than others, I’ve often counted up the hours I spent working at a facility as a studio manager once and it came out to $2.50 an hr !!! Often realizing that I could have made more at a fast food joint.
I’ve had interns that thought they knew it all and couldn’t mix an acceptable rough mix, further they could barely mic things up. Often their studio etiquette skills were zero and they could never run a session start to finish. Studio etiquette is the thing I always tell schools and my alma mater that is most lacking in newer interns. I could write an article on intern horror stories and what NOT to do as an intern.
I learned all of the above skills as an unpaid intern, I had to compete against others to get that internship (and others) and I was abused as an intern, picked on, mad fun of, left to make mad dashes for the last train, really bad. Often, while working on a session years later a light bulb would go off as I did something an I’d suddenly “get” a lesson learned in school. BTW, as a studio manager I also had the privilege of re-doing what interns didn’t do right including cleaning toilets. Some interns are great, some are awful.
Finally, this area as with many in this industry is a very fine line. How many of us have recorded a “demo” or CD for a local band, and when I say “recorded” I really mean Produce/Engineer/Edit/Mix/Master their CD, plus usually I’m also teaching them about the music biz and how to promote their record. Eventually, there comes a point where I’ll exclaim, ” hey I’m already working cheap and you want me to ; shave off a few hours or throw in a mix for free ? This is just one example. Again, I could write an amusing article for Sonic Scoop on this topic too.
Ultimately, it’s up to the schools, the interns, and the studios to assume the responsibility for this issue. I graduated from one of the top 5 recording schools in the world. This didn’t matter, in fact often worked against me at many facilities I interned at for Free. What did matter most was I knew how to wrap cables properly, and mic instruments, use the patch bay and tape machine, and most important not distract from the sessions. I think it’s insane that interns have sued and won. If I think back, like most engineers, how many hours I put in that would have been overtime, with no health insurance or 401k matching, I’d be a millionaire in a different industry, but I CHOSE this one. Interns need to recognize that they do something else, this biz is not for everyone.
TrustMeI'mAScientist
July 19, 2013 at 11:35 am (11 years ago)I hear what you’re saying, and so much of it is so easy to relate to!
But with that said, your story actually suggests that you would have been *better served* if the labor laws were properly enforced. Think about it for a minute:
You, as an actually qualified and competent young worker, would have gotten hired at a sustainable rate. Meanwhile, the surplus of completely useless and clueless “interns” would have been screened out.
On the other hand, if there were a shortage of decent applicants, those under-skilled applicants would have to be properly trained on the job. This means that you, the rare, dedicated and supremely competent young worker, would have had even more leverage to earn the best jobs and the best rates.
Not only would it have been better for you, it would have been better for the clueless interns too! (No one would have “led them on” in exchange for free toilet cleanings and no unscrupulous audio schools could pretend to have “placed them” into “jobs”.) And it would have been better for the businesses too. Because if you ask me, $0 is too high of a price to pay for incompetence.
Of course, it’s okay if we pay *ourselves* less than minimum wage. However, if someone else hires us, pockets a meaningful hourly rate for themselves, and then pays us less than minimum wage, that’s a problem.
As discussed in this article, it’s not only bad business, it’s also illegal. We can debate the merits of this stuff all day, but that’s not going to change the law. (Personally, I think it’s a damn good law.)
Honestly, based on your story, it sounds like you would have *benefited* from the proper enforcement of that law. Mull it over a while. Let me know what you think.
pppPerryandtheMETS
July 21, 2013 at 2:16 pm (11 years ago)I’m sorry, I guess I wasn’t clear enough — (typing away on an iPhone in DISQUS can be a process that lends itself to cloudy communication) So I’ll sum it up as short and concise as I can with a few points.
First, I agree some sort of standard or framework established between studios, AES, and the schools regarding a simple guideline for paying interns would be great. I personally found that interns that had to complete an internship to graduate were generally eager, professional and more apt to pay attention and listen. I always found certain interns had certain strengths, some were great on the phone, some could setup/break down well, some were great a soldering and tech stuff, etc. I think a good intern could come from anywhere or any type of program. Like any other entry level job, those that listen and do exactly what your told to the best of your ability are the interns most likely to succeed.
I also agree that if an intern pay wage was an industry standard it would’ve helped me. It certainly would’ve been nice to have money in my pocket. When I entered the industry in the early 90’s the project studio was just starting to do serious damage to the bottom line of the industry. The economy wasn’t great and record co,’s recording budgets were being slashed, it was a tough time for the studio owner, many didn’t survive. This made for a very competitive environment to work for free and frankly, I think had studio managers had to make decisions on the bottom line regarding which interns were an asset and should stay and which weren’t worth even a few dollars EVERYONE would have been better off not just me.
Finally, I simply think anyone who agrees to an unpaid internship and then files suit is way off base. I’d assume some hungry lawyer had more to do with these cases than the individuals. They’ve agreed to work in exchange for knowledge, at any time they could’ve said, ” Hey this isn’t for me” and sought work elsewhere. I’ve only survived because I had a passion for recording, artists, and records. I learned to diversify, find niches, and expand my knowledge. I’ve worked many jobs, and in many ways I’m still waiting for that big break or door to open. There are many other things I could be doing if I just wanted to earn a very good living. The recording business was certainly not the business to get into when I did if I was looking to earn a decent living, let alone raise a family, or gain wealth. Like I said before, had I put the amount of work into an academic, finance, or any other business I’ve put into the recording industry I’d be probably be well off. Over 20 years into a career its still very competitive, more so in many ways, and oppurtunity is hard to find in the industry. There are success stories, some people have achieved beyond their wildest dreams. I’m still driven by the belief that if you do what you love, the money will come.