Muffin HQ

In preparation for moving to NYC, I’ve been casually perusing the architecture job postings on Craigslist. I found a few ads from firms looking for students or interns willing to work for free to gain “valuable experience” in an “exciting” design firm. Newsflash job hunters, I’ve worked at more arch firms than I am willing to admit in the last 10 years and none of these places are exciting. Not one. If you are going to work, do work that is going to make profit for someone else, get paid! Anyway, I’ve done some research on New York State and California labor laws and it is illegal to not pay your worker at least minimum wage, which is $7.15 an hour in NYS and $8.00 an hour in CA. If your internship is at a non-profit company or if your internship is thru your school and you are getting school credit, then it is not illegal to to pay less than minimum wage, although, I feel one should still get paid.

Back to my original purpose for this post. Unpaid is going to be an on-going series on MuffinHQ, where I will post ads from offending companies. I hope you will enjoy Unpaid, I’ve certainly enjoyed reading the ads. I regularly monitor the ads looking for free work and sending emails out to the offending companies about their labor law violations. I always wish for a response, anything, a “go away idiot” or “thanks for letting us know” kind of reply, but nothing so far. Hopefully, they had enough sense to spend some time looking at staffing numbers and understand that they can afford to pay their part-time student intern help.