Similar to how people can volunteer for a non-profit, is there a way for people to volunteer at for a for-profit company? Some examples of this could be a retired person wanting spend time feeling productive, a friend wanting to help a business owner during a busy time, someone wanting to ensure a struggling store can stay in business, etc. From what I understand, businesses are not allowed to have uncompensated workers except in limited situations, like being an intern. But to be an intern, the person needs to be in school and the work has to be relevant to their studies. If it was just a random person wanting to do something like volunteer to help sort books at a used book store from time-to-time, I believe the owner would need to compensate them. I’m sure that the owner would be happy to just not pay that person, but I think they could get into legal trouble if it was discovered. Is there an above-board, legal way for a business to have volunteers do some kind of work for them?
Why the [censored paragraph of swearing] would anyone want to work for free to enable others to make a profit? WTF?
As opposed to volunteer for NON profits or charitable organizations.
If a retired person wants to contribute they are free to be compensated for their efforts or, if they have some reason to NOT want money, they can volunteer for a non-profit or do some other form of charity. If you want to help a friend then do so for minimum wage. It’s set freakin’ low enough.
No, absolutely for-profit business are not allowed to use uncompensated labor. Holy crap, have you not read any labor history? You think that wouldn’t be extended to other people whenever possible in order to extract more profit?
Yes, absolutely the business owner could get into all sorts of legal trouble if caught. At least in the US. That’s called “wage theft”.
What a completely horrible, terrible idea!
My daughter’s Montessori preschool is a for-profit enterprise that REQUIRED parents to volunteer.
Similarly the after school Math program she was in in middle and high school had assigned “volunteers” to supervise drop off and pick up in the parking lot. At some point they employed professionals to take over this responsibility.
I think both the organization staff and the parents are somewhat confused by for-profit schools. They seem to think of them as quasi-social service organizations.
Why not just donate your paycheck to charity? May need to talk to a tax professional to make sure there are no surprises.
A W-2 employee will typically have a schedule and expected to provide a certain level of service commensurate with their pay. In the cases I’m thinking of, the volunteer may not want the hassles of being that kind of employee. They may just want to swing by the business when they have some free time. Maybe they enjoy being around used books and enjoy sorting them, but they don’t want to be tied to a schedule. Or maybe it’s an art studio where they would want to help with prep and clean up because they like being around the artist and learning their techniques. These might be instances where the business wouldn’t necessarily hire someone for these occasional tasks. If the volunteer is there to help out, great! Otherwise, the business would make due with whoever they have on hand.
What about a 1099?
I think that a small family business is allowed to have their children working there with no wage. But that may be behind the times and will definitely vary by location.
Maybe they could get themselves adopted?
A 1099 doesn’t count as an employee under FSLA guidelines. i.e. The 1099 contractor is a business unto themselves so don’t have the same protections as an employee. But a company runs the risk of misclasification of an employee as an independent contractor if they’re not careful. Any employer that allows a “volunteer” to work for them is just asking for trouble as it opens them up to all sorts of liabilities. Imagine having a “volunteer” for two years only for the government to come knocking on your door one day wanting to talk about back wages owed or benefits.
Some relevant opinions:
Gift-wrapping volunteers are employees and must be paid: Volunteers at For-Profit Companies: Bad Idea Even if for a Good Cause | Baker Donelson (which is referencing DOL Opinion Letter FLSA-1322, I believe)
Thrift store volunteers are also employees: Got volunteers? Not if you're a for-profit company | HR Dive
Generally, the Dept of Labor says this about volunteers:
In administering the FLSA, the Department of Labor follows this judicial guidance in the case of individuals serving as unpaid volunteers in various community services. Individuals who volunteer or donate their services, usually on a part-time basis, for public service, religious or humanitarian objectives, not as employees and without contemplation of pay, are not considered employees of the religious, charitable or similar non-profit organizations that receive their service.
[…]
Under the FLSA, employees may not volunteer services to for-profit private sector employers.
So the test often becomes “does this person, by virtue of their actions, qualify as an employee of the business even if they don’t get paid”. And apparently the answer is often “yes”.
The definition of an employee under the FLSA:
The FLSA defines employee as “any individual employed by an employer” and employ is defined as including “to suffer or permit to work.” The concept of employment in the FLSA is very broad and is tested by “economic reality.”
Whether someone qualifies as an intern, on the other hand, is a different “trainee” test.
All that said… sometimes the for-profit will just create a separate non-profit entity, legally distinct but often involving the same people, that can then recruit volunteers. They keep separate books and do separate functions, typically.
The caveat there is that if the “volunteers” end up performing services that they would otherwise have been paid for as employees (of either the for-profit or non-profit arm), it would look pretty sketchy (at least under pro-labor DoLs).
Edit: It is also possible for a business to make itself owned by a non-profit. Then one could volunteer for the parent nonprofit, again as long as they’re not doing the same things they would be doing as employees.
The clothing company Patagonia recently did this, giving the for-profit business to a non-profit environmental 501c4 that its founders created. The Firefox browser is similarly made by a for-profit business that’s owned by a non-profit foundation (Mozilla Corp vs Mozilla Foundation). A non-profit can own a for-profit, but not the other way around (because non-profits can’t be “owned” per se, though they can certainly be controlled by businesspeople who run them like businesses).
All that said, in the real world this seems to be rarely enforced. Many exercise studios offer some sort of work-trade arrangement to have their students help clean the place up, for example. Google Maps lets the public add and correct mistaken roads, etc. as free labor. There are a bunch of commercial open-source software that accept volunteer code. We provide volunteer content to Facebook, Twitter, the SDMB owners, etc.
My suspicion is that if you just do it under the radar, nobody would know, and even if they found out, it would very rarely be enforced unless you happen to get sued by a volunteer and it gets challenged in court. The DoL is relatively weak even under the bluest administrations, and it’s about to get a whole lot weaker. They don’t have the resources to go after every used bookstore.
I sympathize with these kinds of goals. I think where it becomes a problem is when the work becomes even semi-regular. A friend might come in and spend an afternoon helping do minor chores in my business, once in a while. If it’s several times in a month, though, that changes things.
As has been so vehemently pointed out, labor is not the best currency if you want to help a small for-profit business, because labor needs to retain its value in the workplace. So beyond patronizing the business yourself, and encouraging others to do so, all I can think of is financial help, if you are so inclined.
If a retired person wants to spend time working to feel productive, then they could certainly spend that time on a non-profit organization. There are so many different ones around, accommodating different interests and abilities, that it should be possible for nearly anyone to find something productive to do.
Not the OP, but just as a different point of view… I’m pretty pro-labor myself, having been involved with some union organizing in the past… but I don’t think “volunteering for a business” always has to be some grand capitalist conspiracy. Maybe it always is in the eyes of the law (and that makes sense), but reality is more nuanced.
There’s a difference between “Evil giant corporation cuts hours at 500 stores and replaces them with clueless teenage volunteers” and “small-town yoga studio needs some help putting on their free holiday yoga event for the community”. Or another example, I was at a local used bookshop not that long ago. The shopkeep suddenly had some urgent thing come up and needed to step out for a few mins, but a few customers were in there still browsing. We had been chatting for a while previously, so they just asked me to watch the store for 10 minutes. They got back and everything was fine. They gifted me a big box of old magazines.
Even if it’s something regularly scheduled, like maybe a for-profit thrift store that’s associated with some animal rescue (because the people involved didn’t figure out the legal structure correctly), maybe Jane the Retiree really loves her Sunday mornings feeding and socializing the store cats. She doesn’t really have enough money to donate anything substantial to the rescue, and the thrift store would have to close if it had to pay her minimum wage in that expensive town they’re in, but in that case both benefit without a clearly exploitative relationship occurring.
Giving time can often build community in ways that giving money alone cannot. And not everyone has money to give.
The law doesn’t allow for that kind of nuance, but in everyday communities, kindnesses like that can just be a day-to-day of community functions, especially among small businesses. Even if they’re technically illegal. Where it breaks down is when these small businesses scale up and get taken over by evil capitalist overlords that try to exploit every possible loophole in the law so they can plus size their next yacht… or even just the occasional small business owner that really is just a piece of work that steals their employees’ tips and then makes them “volunteer” overtime during the holidays in exchange for a weak possibility of a future promotion. It’s all kinds of grey. The law is designed to protect people from abuse like that, but it very rarely actually succeeds (again, lack of resources for enforcement), and it also doesn’t really have set-asides for the more ethical/non-abusive arrangements. It’s a blanket ban on paper, so in reality people just skirt the laws and do it anyway like they do it with so many other overzealous laws.
Years ago I had someone who applied for a job when I was not in need of an employee. If I needed someone, I’d have hired her. She asked if she could work without pay. Weird idea, but I looked into it and my insurance at the time would not be happy with the situation.
I worked at a bakery when I was 16. I remember we had to immediately leave the premises after clocking out. The explanation was that, if we got injured and were not on the clock, the company’s insurance would not cover us.
Lots of good info. It seems like between the legal and insurance aspects, it’s not really possible to volunteer for a business.
I imagine there would be a way to make it work with with a 1099 where I charged a nominal rate. I don’t think there’s any requirement that the owner of a business makes a certain wage. But it would probably be too strange and convoluted to actually be feasible. I would guess that any business I worked with would require me to have my own liability insurance. And most businesses would be leery of such an unusual request to volunteer to work for them with the 1099. But I would think it technically could be done with a 1099 type of arrangement.
A thought came to me: What if, instead of dancing that fine line between employee and volunteer, you made them a customer instead? Charge them $1 for a Lifetime Membership in the Amateur Sorting Hat Club, and one of their privileges is unlimited behind-the-scenes access to bookstore operations and the chance to try their hand at it.
Wonder if that would work…
Pretty sure the owner’s insurance would object, especially if said “amateur” became injured in some manner.
I have heard of something called a “vocation vacation”, where you can go and effectively work as an intern for a couple of days and try out a particular job. I guess the idea is to give you the chance to figure out if you’d really like, say working in a brewery, before actually going out and perusing that as a career.