Review: So Sue Me

So Sue Me-Article on Student Interns

Jim Castagnera of Rider University recently wrote another interesting article entitled "So Sue Me" for the May/June 2010 issue of Today's Campus, available here Download Jim.
Though the article is not appear to be written for lawyers, lawyers, law students and others interested in employment law will find it of interest. It is about a topic we cover with some frequency-employee status. More specifically, the employee status of student interns. Are they employees protected under the FLSA (and its min. wage and OT requirements)?; are they covered by other statutes such as the NLRA? Or, as Prof. Castagnera points out should the law treat students as non-employees as the NLRB did several years ago.
Jim also predicts that the NLRB decision holding that students are not employee's will be over-turned by the Obama Board. I could not agree more. As the article states:
In 2010 the Dems are back in the saddle.
Without a doubt, unions interested in representing
some of the tens of thousands of
graduate assistants laboring in private higher
education will bring their cases to a board
now staffed by three Democrats and just one
republican. the flip that occurred in the
Brown University case during the Bush era
will most likely become a flop in 2010 or
2011. GAs will once again be converted by
legal jargon from students into employees.
Following such a re-reversal will be a flood
of fresh organizing efforts and concomitant
labor litigation.
Bottom Line: Uncle Sam’s intensified
interest in college-student labor will result in
lots more litigation producing significant billable
hours for lawyers.
Prof. Castagnera is also the author of the Employment Law Answer book, which we reviewed here and Al-Qaeda Goes to College which is an absolute must read. Prof. Castagnera also just published Handbook for Student Law for Higher Education Administrators which I cannot wait to read.
Mitchell H. Rubinstein