Following a wave of similar lawsuits beginning last June, Complex reports that a group of 3,000 former Warner Music Group interns have been approved to file a class action lawsuit against the label.
Last week, a New York federal judge approved a lawsuit that claims Warner Music Group violated minimum wage and overtime requirements as well as other Fair Labor Standard Act regulations.
The suit was originally filed in June of last year by a single former intern named Kyle Grant. Grant’s suit claims that “during the Plaintiffs term of employment, his duties primarily consisted of answering telephones, making photocopies, making deliveries, creating lists, preparing coffee, getting lunch for paid employees, running personal errands for paid employees, and other similar duties.”
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According to Digital Music News, if the group of former interns win the suit, WMG will risk a multimillion dollar backpay payout as well as forced changes to its current policies.
Last year, HipHopDX reported that a former Bad Boy Entertainment intern sued the company for unpaid work spanning a period of five months. Rashida Salaam complained about the lack of pay for performing tasks similar to Grant’s claims against WMG.
Like many of its kind, the unpaid-intern lawsuit against Warner Music Group was filed just weeks after a June 11 ruling in New York last year that found that Fox should have paid two production interns for work completed on the movie Black Swan in 2010. The decision hinged on a Fair Labor Standards requirement that interns should not “displace regular employees” according to Bloomberg Businessweek. Additionally, the suit found that internship duties should be “educational” and worthy of pay if the company in question stands to benefit.
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