Bernie Sanders Pays Interns $12 an Hour, Campaigns for $15 Minimum Wage-Truth! & Misleading!
Summary of eRumor:
Bernie Sanders has campaigned for a $15 minimum wage, yet he only pays his interns $12 an hour.
The Truth:
Claims about how much Bernie Sanders pays interns are true, but they’re also misleading.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Bernie Sanders regularly called for a $15 federal minimum wage to help support working class families. Sanders’s campaign website lists raising the minimum wage as one of his issues:
Millions of Americans are working for totally inadequate wages. We must ensure that no full-time worker lives in poverty. The current federal minimum wage is starvation pay and must become a living wage. We must increase it to $15 an hour over the next several years.
It’s also true that Bernie Sanders pays interns $12 an hour. Full- and part-time internships are available to “recent graduates and those currently pursuing a degree,” according to Sanders’ Senate page:
Interns are an integral part of our Senate operation and contribute greatly to the senator’s work on behalf of Vermont and the nation. Senate interns have the unique privilege of gaining an insider’s perspective on the legislative and representative process. Our Washington and Burlington offices offer paid full- and part-time internships tailored for recent graduates and current students at the undergraduate or graduate level.
The issue came up when Bernie Sanders introduced a bill to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour in July 2015. A short time later, The Daily Caller, a conservative news site started by Tucker Carlson, drew attention to the discrepancy with an article headlined “Bernie Sanders Demands $15 Per Hour Minimum Wage, Pays His Own Interns $12 PER HOUR.”
The report is true, but it’s also misleading.
Internships aren’t covered under the Fair Labor Standards Act’s federal minimum wage provisions. Internships were carved out because they’re viewed as educational tools for college students and recent graduates to gain first-hand knowledge that will help them advance in a field.
The Department of Labor uses a six-part test to determine whether interns for for-profit companies must be compensated, but given that politics isn’t (technically) a for-profit industry, and given the job description for interns, Sanders wouldn’t have to pay interns at all, but he does:
Interns are an integral part of our Senate operation and contribute greatly to the senator’s work on behalf of Vermont and the nation. Senate interns have the unique privilege of gaining an insider’s perspective on the legislative and representative process. Our Washington and Burlington offices offer paid full- and part-time internships tailored for recent graduates and current students at the undergraduate or graduate level.
So, it’s true that Bernie Sanders doesn’t pay his interns $15 an hour even though he has called for a $15 federal minimum wage. But internships aren’t governed by the same minimum wage laws as other positions because the “real world experience” they offer is deemed more valuable.