UPDATED: Worcester legal expert urges for-profits to pay interns

PHOTO/Matt Volpini A speaker discusses resources to help employers find interns from area colleges during a Worcester Chamber of Commerce seminar Monday at MCPHS University.

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A labor law expert cautioned for-profit companies about offering unpaid internships during a Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce forum Monday.

Brian Mullin, a partner with Worcester-based Bowditch & Dewey, said for-profit companies must be able to prove in court that they didn’t derive a direct or immediate benefit from having an unpaid intern, or use the intern as a substitute for a paid employee.

“In order for it to be a defensible program, you have to be able to show that it was a detriment in some way to your organization to provide the internship,” Mullin told nearly 70 attendees at MCPHS University for the chamber seminar.

Mullin was joined by Paul Belsito, director of community and university relations at Worcester-based Hanover Insurance Group, and Libis Bueno, president and CEO at Domitek, an information technology (IT) services firm in Worcester.

Any unpaid internship offered by a for-profit must have a strong mentorship element to argue convincingly that the internship’s primary purpose was to educate the student, Mullin said. He urged for-profits with unpaid internships to not have the students do such menial work as filing papers or ordering lunch since it’s difficult to justify those tasks as educational.

Mullin said the safest thing companies can do is pay their interns at least minimum wage, even if the internship is required as part of a course of study.

Not-for-profits are legally allowed to have individuals – including college or high school students – volunteer to do civil or charitable work on their behalf, Mullin said. The program would, therefore, be permissible since the student would legally be considered a volunteer rather than an employee.

The Hanover operates a paid, 10-week internship program each summer aimed at incoming college seniors, Belsito said. Nearly 500 students applied for this year’s 40 internship slots, he said.

The company makes employment offers to 80 percent of its interns, 85 percent of whom end up taking positions with the company after graduating, Belsito said.

“It (the internship) is a ten-week job interview,” he said.

Interns for The Hanover are assigned both a talent manager to supervise them on projects, as well as a peer ambassador, who are typically in their mid-20s and getting their first managerial experience. Belsito said the interns also meet as a group from 9 to 10:30 a.m. every Wednesday for seminars on workplace skills and the insurance industry.

“Not only are they learning a lot, but they’re also coming together as a cohort,” Belsito said.

Domitek accepts paid interns around the year, Bueno said, many of whom come from Worcester State University or Worcester Technical High School. Interns are assigned one of the company’s five technicians as a mentor, and Bueno said he meets with and buys them lunch each Friday.

Bueno said the interns are often involved with providing free IT services to veterans and the unemployed, as well as building networks for smaller clients such as the Boys & Girls Club. Once the internships are done, Bueno said he meets with career counselors at each of the participating schools to verify that students time at Domitek met their expectations.

“Students are always going to remember their first internship,” Bueno said.

The chamber also used Monday’s event to announce a new undertaking to connect Central Massachusetts college students with internships. It will be led by Karen Pelletier, who was brought onto the chamber staff for that purpose.

“Our goal is to strengthen the connection between the business and higher education communities with a focus on developing our economy, retaining students to stay and work in the region after graduation, and building a pipeline for existing employers,” chamber president and CEO Timothy Murray said in a statement.

As part of the chamber’s initiative, it will become part of the Internship Collaborative, a partnership led by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. That will help bring its InternHub.com website, which posts open internships, to students, employers and career counselors in this region.

Editor's Note: This story was updated with additional information at 3:15 p.m. Wednesday