Interns who worked for Viacom going back to August 2010 stand to finally earn some cash for their labors as the media corporation settles a class action lawsuit out of court, according to Hollywood Reporter.
The interns, led by lead plaintiff Casey O’Jeda, eventually had more than 300 of their number joining in on the suit.
A judge involved in the case, in certifying it, said that there was ample proof that Viacom was using unpaid interns rather than going to the expense of hiring regular paid staff.
That did not prevent Viacom from challenging the lawsuit, but it has decided not to do so.
Details, including how much the allegedly stiffed interns will receive, are still being worked out, but according to HR, the parties decided that there was enough agreement in principal on the settlement to pull it from the court even while negotiations continue.
Other media companies, including NBCU, have blazed the settlement trail rather than the litigation trail ahead of Viacom. Fox also faces a similar suit and is expected to take it to court.
RBR-TVBR observation: Seriously, for media companies that do double back flips to court the hard-to-reach younger demos, and who certainly know better than any other type of corporation the value of publicity, to turn around and take advantage of members of that demo is mind-boggling.
We’d go in the opposite direction – especially if we were Viacom, which as Hollywood Reporter was quick to mention, owns MTV among other youth oriented properties.
We’d overpay our young temporary hires who are doing intern-type work, and advertise it as the coolest gig in the world. We’d make every individual in the target age group covet that job, and we’d base a marketing campaign completely on how cool our interns are and don’t you wish you were one.
We would make our interns love us so much that they spread the word about just how cool our company is with no encouragement necessary. That’s what social media is for, isn’t it?
This is really pretty cheap marketing, is it not? And grunt work gets done as a side benefit?
The last thing we’d do is stiff them and then try to bring the full weight of our corporate legal department on them to crush them in court.
