Posted on 09-Mar-10 by The Timekeeper

OK, so it’s still winter, but it’s not too early to start thinking about those spring and summer internships. You may already be thinking a few interns would be just the thing to help tide you over through the summertime, when many of your regular employees might like to take some vacation time.

And, of course, the idea of unpaid interns sounds pretty attractive (and budget-friendly, especially while the economy is still soft).

But before you rush out to acquire a few college-student indentured servants for the summer, here are a few things to keep in mind. Just as with the regular employee overtime exemption — where it’s the employee’s job duties, not simply their job title, that determines whether they’re eligible for overtime or not — you can’t simply call somebody an “intern” and get away with paying them less than minimum wage (or not paying them at all). There are strict criteria that must be met before you can bring somebody on board without at least paying them minimum wage.

• The idea of unpaid internships is to benefit students by providing them with real-world experience they wouldn’t otherwise get. So any training received by the intern must be general, not for the immediate advantage of the business, and must be for the benefit of the intern. This training may even cause interruptions and slowdowns in normal business operations. So, if you plan to train the intern on your specific business processes so they can help you out by temporarily assuming some of the duties of one of your employees, you’d better be prepared to pay them at least minimum wage for their time.

• For that matter, an unpaid intern can’t be used to replace a paid employee in the first place.

• On the other hand, unpaid interns can do “real work” as long as they’re closely supervised or mentored, are learning and aren’t necessarily creating a final product. You need to determine beforehand if you’ll have sufficient staff to meet this close supervision or mentoring requirement.

• Both the intern and the business must agree that the internship will be unpaid, and that no job is promised at the end of the internship. However, the intern’s high school, tech school or college can partner with businesses to offer internship programs that offer class credit.

Another thing to keep in mind, most interns — being students — will probably be subject to child labor restrictions. You’ll want to make sure you don’t ask your interns to do any work that would be prohibited under these rules. The U.S. DOL takes those kinds of violations very seriously indeed — and child labor is one of their current areas of focus.

Check with your employment law attorney to make sure any internship program you’re planning is set up correctly to keep your business out of trouble. And when in doubt, pay your interns at least minimum wage.

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