[liberationtech] Internships available at leading Palo Alto tech startup

[Leigh Honeywell]

Unpaid internships are illegal and discriminatory.  In terms of "white
collar" labour practices, few things piss me off quite so much.

I'm not a lawyer, but the California Department of Industrial Relations,
Division of Labor Enforcement is pretty clear about what companies are
allowed to use unpaid interns for:

http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/opinions/2010-04-07.pdf

I'd call special attention to the following (federal, cited in the DLSE
letter) criteria for an "internship" being exempt from minimum wage laws:

(4) The employer derives no immediate advantage from the activities of
trainees or students, and on occasion the employer's operations may be
actually impeded;

You state that "Interns will play a valuable role in building the leading
social advertising platform on Facebook." I'm pretty sure that means you
have to pay said interns.

I've CC'ed your company's HR and recruiting contacts just so that it's
perfectly clear that your company is aware that this is likely illegal.

-Leigh

On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 6:43 PM, Hamdan Azhar <hamdan.azhar at gmail.com>wrote:

> Please forward widely!
>
> ---
> INTERNSHIPS AVAILABLE AT LEADING SILICON VALLEY STARTUP
>
> GraphScience - a Palo Alto based venture-backed startup focusing on
> predictive behavioral analytics in social networks - is offering
> internships for college students and recent graduates. Interns will play a
> valuable role in building the leading social advertising platform on
> Facebook.
>
> Our clients are major Fortune 500 retailers and we're looking for quirky,
> creative, self-motivated individuals who would thrive in a fast-paced
> environment. Internships are unpaid and last for at least 3 months.
>
> Interested? Email us your resume, your favorite ice cream flavor, and the
> name of the last book you read.
>
> CONTACT: Hamdan Azhar, Lead Data Scientist, hamdan at graphscience.com
>
> --
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-- 
Leigh Honeywell
http://hypatia.ca
@hypatiadotca
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