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Comment by dx87 | Hacker News Reader

According the the DoL, it looks like there's nothing wrong with what they're doing. As long as they only work on the free marketing projects, it thier work would just count as training.

https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.htm

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The current DOL rules may not specifically speak to it, but federal courts have established the 'primary beneficiary test.'[0] If the primary beneficiary of the 'internship' is the company organizing it, it's illegal free labor. This seems to be the case for this company.

[0] https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/legal-and-compliance/...

It wouldn't count as training unless there is some formal training program put on by the company. Additionally, the customers are paying money -- they're paying $49/mo to receive the work of an apprentice.

This sort of stuff happens all the time. Its surprisingly common for unpaid interns to operate in a grey area. Can't really say this company is doing anything illegal without actually knowing what the program looks like for the apprentices. Every company I've worked at has decided its better to just pay them something, even if just minimum wage, to avoid risk of lawsuit. I also just think thats the right thing to do.

It seems odd that apprenticeships would prohibit the apprentice from working on activities that make money. I don't think that's the case anywhere. Maybe there's some special apprenticeship model where that's forbidden? It wouldn't make much sense since the purpose of most companies is to make a profit.

It doesn't explicitly forbid this, which is where the grey area tends to come into place. The official policy is to consider:

> The extent to which the intern’s work complements, rather than displaces, the work of paid employees while providing significant educational benefits to the intern.

The argument would be made that since the company is charging for work from unpaid interns to be fulfilled only by unpaid interns, it would be displacing the work of paid employees as opposed to complementing them. Of course, there's a lot more to it than just that going into the litmus test.

Yes, it's definitely a grey area. All it would be needed to have it not "displace work of paid employees" would be for a paid employee to have supervision responsibilities to review the final work, even if that would be 0.1% of all the work done. I think that's a valid concern, thanks for raising that point.

The company offers training and various courses to the apprentices. The students are generally studying things not related to businesses or digital marketing. They are only interested in these topics and want to learn. So while they watch the courses and read articles, they practice working inside real businesses.

I don't think it's a bad idea, as in many times the real knowledge comes from practicing and using all the techniques you have learnt. But agree that working for free sucks.

It actually goes the other way, the litmus test is something like this:

- is the student doing something that tangibly contributes to the business? - is the student doing something that you would normally pay an employee to do?

If the answer to either of those questions is yes, you should pay the student/intern. Of course, IANAL, and this only applies to the ISA, but that is how acquaintances who are self-employed handle their interns.

The only time you can have an unpaid intern is when their work is substantially education, and does not contribute to the bottom line.

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