Q&A: How lenient are background check agencies on unpaid internships?
Question by Kaiser Wilhilm: How lenient are background check agencies on unpaid internships?
I did an unpaid internship for my dad’s business about 3 years ago. I am being background checked right now and they asked for the W2/paycheck stub for this internship. I am inclined to tell them it was for my dad’s business and unpaid, but just the fact that unpaid internships are “technically” illegal here makes me a little worried. Are background check agencies usually lenient on this sort of things?
Best answer:
Answer by Judy
A background check is a background check. They just report facts they find to the organization that hires them to do the check. First of all, it’s not necessarily illegal for an internship to be unpaid, and secondly as long as you told the truth about it there’s no problem.
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
September 7th, 2011 at 8:23 pm
If it was a true internship under the standards imposed by the Federal Labor Standards Act (FLSA) then it is legal, but if it is an actual job for which someone would normally be paid then it would be a violation of the minimum wage pay requirements under the FLSA and California minimum wage laws because it your dad runs a for-profit business (as opposed to nonprofit or public/government employer).
The internship must fulfill all of the following criteria:
1. The training, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to that which would be given in a vocational school;
2. The training is for the benefit of the trainee;
3. The trainees do not displace regular employees, but work under close observation;
4. The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the trainees and on occasion the employer’s operations may actually be impeded;
5. The trainees are not necessarily entitled to a job at the completion of the training period; and
6. The employer and the trainee understand that the trainees are not entitled to wages for the time spent in training.
Items 3 and 4 are the ones that are most problematic for most private employers that claim to use unpaid volunteers for “internship” positions and it’s likely that the work you did for your father’s business would not fulfill those criteria.
There are a lot of illegal unpaid “internships” in the private sector that never get reported. While I am not advocating what your father or any of these employers do, it is unlikely that the agency that conducts your background check will report your father to the Department of Labor. They have no real interest in doing so, so you should not be too concerned with telling them that it was an unpaid internship position.