InternMatch Issues Statement on Donna Karan International Inc., Donna Karan Studio LLC Unpaid Intern Lawsuit

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Providing interns with an unpaid, under-educational experience can ruin your image as an employer of interns and full-time employees, while creating a paid intern program is good business.

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) September 03, 2013

Nathan Parcells, Chief Marketing Officer at InternMatch, an online platform that helps students find internships and companies hire talented students, issued a statement on the class-action lawsuit filed by Valentino Smith against Donna Karan International Inc. and Donna Karan Studio LLC (Valentino Smith v. Donna Karan International Inc. and Donna Karan Studio LLC, Case Number 157912-2013 in the Supreme Court of New York County). As a former intern of Karan’s, Smith’s suit claims he did not learn about marketing as promised and did not receive minimum wage while he was an intern at the company's Seventh Avenue headquarters in 2009, according to court documents.

The statement reads as follows:

“The millions of unpaid internships in the U.S. every year are costing hundreds of thousands of jobs. While paid internships turn into a job 60 percent of the time, unpaid internship experience offers a measly 1 percent bump over no internship experience at all (37 percent vs. 36 percent). This should sound an alarm for everyone defending the ‘pay your dues and you’ll be better off long-term’ argument.

“Additionally, labor groups have fought hard over the last 100+ years to protect workers from discrimination in both the hiring process and on the job -- but unpaid interns have no legal recourse when it comes to sexual harassment or discrimination on the job because they aren’t actually employees.

“Providing interns with an unpaid, under-educational experience can ruin your image as an employer of interns and full-time employees, while creating a paid intern program is good business. It helps to find more talented students (paid positions get 2.7 times as many applications as unpaid roles), helps increase conversion of interns to full-time hires, and creates more buy-in from students during their internship.

“While interns need to be paid, they don't need a huge salary. In fact, interns actually rank financial compensation last in terms of most valuable perks, according to recent data in InternMatch’s 2013 State of the Internship report. By not paying interns and allowing students to ‘pay their dues,’ businesses are actually setting themselves up for serious legal troubles.

“This is why we at InternMatch started an Intern Bill of Rights. With more than 40 companies – including organizations like CBS Interactive and BookRenter -- signed on board, it advocates for a simple set of best practices that organizations like the White House, Universal Music Group, and more should adopt or else face continued heat over their unpaid intern.”

About InternMatch
Founded in 2009 by Andrew Maguire and Nathan Parcells, InternMatch is a booming online internship platform. Employers can utilize Campus Hubs and other branding efforts to show off company culture, attract the right interns, and promote diversity. While students using the site can take advantage of resume creation tools and tailored searches to find the right internship for their needs. Companies both big and small use InternMatch to find great students every day, including Google, Nestle Purina, and Viacom. For more information, visit http://www.internmatch.com.

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