Summer brings an annual invasion, in nearly every line of work, of shiny new interns. They’re eager to fill out résumés and make contacts. That’s what they get instead of money—and so they save their employers about $600 million every year, according to Ross Perlin in his book Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy. That’s why the free intern bonanza continues despite plenty of complaints that it frequently means breaking the law.

Last week, in Glatt v. Fox Searchlight Pictures, a federal judge in New York broke up the party. Judge William H. Pauley III ruled that interns on two film production crews, including one from the Academy Award winning Black Swan, were employees entitled to payment with actual money. By not paying the interns, their employers violated the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Judge Pauley got it right. Much too often interns do work that people ought to earn money doing. The benefits of the intern economy don’t outweigh the pernicious costs: distorted wages, exploitation of interns, a race to the bottom of the wage scale, and an erosion of the law’s protections for workers.

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