Madison Square Garden Intern Lawsuit Could Create Disastrous Precedent For Workers

Today’s post was shared by The Workers’ Injury Law & Advocacy Group and comes from www.forbes.com

The World’s Most Famous Arena, Madison Square Garden (MSG), has become the latest company to be targeted in a class action by former interns claiming they were wrongly classified to avoid being paid.

The lawsuit, which is estimated to include a class of more than 500 individuals, claims that MSG used titles such as “intern” or “student associate” when hiring college students to do work which would otherwise qualify them as employees. Interns were asked to work as many as five days a week, where they helped support MSG ticket and sponsorship sales, administrative projects and logistics pertaining to the organization of sports and entertainment events at the arena. The suit is seeking damages to cover unpaid wages for misclassified workers stemming back to 2007.

View of Knicks game at Madison Square Garden

According to the complaint, “Defendants did not provide any compensation to… members of the putative class for the hours worked… [and] would have hired additional employees or required existing staff to work additional hours had… members of the putative class not performed work for the defendants.”

The MSG lawsuit comes on the heels of several suits being brought against major entertainment, fashion and media companies for similar unfair labor practices concerning the hiring of interns. Among those entities being sued include Gawker Media LLC,  Columbia Recordings Corp, and NBCUniversal and its famous Saturday Night Live program. Former…

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