Task 14

Interns Are Suing Their Employers for Back Pay Two interns sued Fox Searchlight Pictures claiming their jobs would otherwise have been done by paid employees . . . and they wanted to be paid for it. A federal judge agreed and turned the notion of the unpaid internship upside down. Fox’s lead attorney Juno Turner says: “I think it would be the very rare internship that would meet the criteria set forth in this decision.” The U.S. Fair Labor Standards Act sets forth rules that must be followed to hire unpaid interns. A strict interpretation seems to push employers in the direction of offering only paid internships. An exception is the public sector where nonprofits are allowed to employee interns as volunteers.

There’s no doubt that internships are a well-established source of valuable experience for students and a job entry point for many. What diff erence does pay make in this work-for-experience transaction? Heather Huhman, author of Lies, Damned Lies & Internships, says: “A job listed on a resume wouldn’t impress me just because it was a paid position. What matters is the experience you get from a job.”

Your Decision? Is it right for interns to demand pay in return for valuable work e xperience and a possible job entry point? Are employers taking advantage of interns by not paying them for doing real work? What’s the dividing line between fairness and exploitation in an internship contract? Who benefits from the Fox case? Are we about to see a decline in the number of student internships? What’s your internship experience? Did you engage in tasks that had an immediate positive benefit for the firm you were working for? Did it seem wrong to you that you weren’t being paid?

Task 15

Europe Turns to Quotas to Get Women on Boards The consulting firm McKinsey & Company reports that women are hired into more than 50% of professional jobs in America’s largest corporations. But they gradually leak from the career pipeline. Women hold just 16.9% of director positions on Fortune 500 corporate boards. Data from Europe are worse—13.7% of board seats are filled by women. Diane Segalen, senior executive at a Paris-based executive search company, says: “Some men over 60 think suitable females don’t exist because they have never had women as their peers. They think women can’t take the pressure involved in serving on a board.”

Some European countries have turned to gender quotas to rectify this imbalance at the board level. British firms have been threatened with mandatory quotas unless the proportion of nonexecutive board seats filled by women rises to 25% in the near future. Norway, Spain, Iceland, and France have already set quotas of 40% female board members. In the United States, however, a Heidrick & Struggles survey of boards shows that whereas 51% of females support quotas such as those appearing in Europe, only 25% of males agree. What’s Your Take? Is underrepresentation of women on boards a “pipeline” problem— not enough qualified women currently available for these senior positions? Or, is it a “discrimination” problem—men at the top still aren’t ready to open the doors to female candidates? What are the ethics of setting gender quotas at the board level, top management, and the C-suite? Are you willing to sit back and wait for change in female representation on boards? Or do you support quotas to motivate faster positive action?