NBCUniversal will pay $6.4 million to settle a class action lawsuit brought by former interns, Daniel Miller reports in the Los Angeles Times.
The suit was originally brought last July by Jesse Moore and Monet Eliastam, who interned at MSNBC and “Saturday Night Live,” respectively, and “grew to include plaintiffs from other states,” Miller writes.
Related: Poynter’s list of paid internships
They’ll get “special bonuses,” and “a handful of plaintiffs would receive $2,000 to $10,000 each,” Miller writes. “Other unpaid interns who qualify to be included in the settlement would see far less — $505 on average, according to the legal filings.”
In 2012, Rachel Bien, a lawyer for the firm that represented Moore and Eliastam (and has helped lead the charge on lawsuits over unpaid internships), told Poynter, “The fact that interns get some benefit from the internship doesn’t mean the company doesn’t have to pay them for work that provides an advantage to the company.”
