Q. Our company wants to establish an internship program and host student interns to work alongside our employees. Do we need to pay the interns?
A. Possibly. Over the past few years, courts and the Department of Labor (“DOL”) have carefully examined the relationship between businesses and unpaid student interns to determine whether students working at a company are more properly classified as unpaid interns or employees protected by the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”). Under the FLSA, if an individual is deemed a non-exempt employee, that employee must be paid at least a minimum of $7.25 per hour and one and a half times their regular rate of pay for all hours worked in excess of 40 in a workweek. The minimum wage is higher in many states, including New York and New Jersey.