Based on course materials and the two cases described below, write a letter to Chief Justice Roberts on the question of rights of interns vs. employers right, tracing it to the Lochner case and your reading of sociological theories of social stratification and power (Marx or Weber or Foucault). College students are increasingly burdened with the challenges of internship culture in our country. News reports and recent legal cases show that often time’s interns provide valuable labor in organizations without

Based on course materials and the two cases described below, write a letter to Chief Justice Roberts on the question of rights of interns vs. employers right, tracing it to the Lochner case and your reading of sociological theories of social stratification and power (Marx or Weber or Foucault). College students are increasingly burdened with the challenges of internship culture in our country. News reports and recent legal cases show that often time’s interns provide valuable labor in organizations without financial remuneration. While this is considered acceptable as interns gain valuable educational experience, many a times internship involves work of a paid employee. For instance, in a 2013 case, Alexander Footman and Eric Glatt (interns) claimed that Fox Studio violated their rights, as their work as interns at the company was equivalent to the work of a paid employee and had little educational value. In another case, in New York, a women intern was sexually harassed at her workplace, but her case was dismissed as she was not considered an employee. In fact, the Court ruled that unpaid interns don’t have the right to be free of sexual harassment or other discrimination at work since they do not qualify for being an employee. The court determined that (a) the test of who’s an “employer” — who pays, who supervises, who has hire/fire power, etc. — is inappropriate to use when determining who’s an “employee,” and that the threshold question is whether or not there’s a paycheck.