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Business News Legal
Warner to settle unpaid intern litigation in the US
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 2 February 2015
Warner Music in the US is set to settle a class action accusing the major of breaching employment laws through its past internship programmes.
As previously reported, legal action by two former unpaid interns at Warner – Justin Henry and Kyle Grant – led to a combined class action lawsuit which claimed to represent 3000 other people who had previously interned for the record company and its subsidiaries.
Quite how Warner plans to settle the legal action isn’t yet clear, but lawyers working for Henry and Grant told the judge overseeing the case last week that terms had been agreed by both sides in the dispute. As a class action, that deal will need court approval, which means the specifics should be made apparent in early March.
A number of American media and entertainment companies have been hit with similar lawsuits by former unpaid interns in the last year or so. Meanwhile, in the UK, most big music companies have moved away from offering unpaid internships, except where part of a recognised college course, after a crackdown by HMRC on the matter.
