A group of unpaid interns in the New York City Council launched a campaign this week to pressure the council to pay all of its interns – and one intern spearheading the campaign was abruptly fired shortly after.
Mina Farahmand, a recent graduate of New York University, began working as an unpaid intern for New York City Council Member Harvey Epstein, the chair of the Committee on Consumer and Worker Protection. Her internship started on May 19 and was supposed to last through the end of July.
This week, Farahmand and 31 other interns sent a petition to Speaker Julie Menin calling for the creation of a dedicated intern fund as part of this year’s city budget, to ensure that all interns receive a living wage of $32 per hour and benefits like health insurance…