Gawker Media sued by former unpaid interns
Gawker Media has found itself in the centre of a class-action lawsuit as a group of former interns are suing the gossip site for not being paid "a single cent".
The lawsuit, which was filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York (Manhattan) on Friday, claims the three former interns spent between 15 and 25 hours each week researching and writing blogs and promoting the New York-based company through social media.
Founder and owner Nick Denton is named as the defendant in the lawsuit which claims "Gawker employs numerous other 'interns' in the same way, paying them nothing or underpaying them and utilising their services to publish its content on the Internet, an enterprise that generates significant amounts of revenue for Gawker."
Representing the three former interns in Andrea M. Paparella who told Bloomberg that the lawsuit had been filed in order to protect entry-level positions and the standard minimum wage.
Speaking to the press, Paparella said: "We don't want to replace entry-level jobs with interns who aren't being paid. Not everybody can afford to take an unpaid job when they graduate college. And they could be shut out of certain industries if this was a norm of having certain industries having unpaid internship programs. Minimum wage law says, even if a person agrees to it, you can't pay them less than minimum wage. Imagine what the implications would be. It would make minimum wage meaningless."
The lawsuit follows similar legal action takes against the Fox Searchlight unit of News Corp, Conde Nast and Warner Music Group.