This has got to be an epidemic. And what is so bad is that these unpaid interns are being unpaid by successful people who could afford to pay them.
There’s no excuse for Donna Karan not to pay an intern. There’s no excuse for Donna Karan to be hiring interns. Just hire young people. As trainees, or whatever you want to call them. But pay them.
From today’s Daily News by Barbara Ross:
Karan must pay: intern
A young Queens man with dreams of a marketing career is suing Donna Karan for not paying him minimum wages while he was an undergraduate intern at the company’s Seventh Ave. headquarters in 2009.
“I was told it would be a great learning experience,” Vallentino Smith, 25, said. However, instead of learning about marketing, he said, he memorized who drank what and where to put clothes.
Smith seeks retroactive pay and class-action status for other Karan interns. Karan didn’t return a call for comment.
She should. C’mon, Donna: comment.