1 of 3 | Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen arrive on the red carpet at the 2015 CFDA Fashion Awards at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City on June 1, 2015. Their Dualstar Entertainment company is being sued by a group of former interns whom were unpaid but worked excessive weekly hours. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI |
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NEW YORK, Aug. 11 (UPI) -- Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashley Olsen's profitable Dualstar Entertainment Group is being sued by about 40 former and current interns who claim they weren't paid for their work.
Lead plaintiff Shahista Lalani, a former design intern who worked under Olsen fashion label The Row's head technical designer in 2012, claims she experienced maltreatment during her five month, unpaid internship. A class-action lawsuit was filed in Manhattan Supreme Court accusing the company of wage theft.
"[The head technical designer] was very demanding," The New York Post reports Lalani said. "I was doing the work of three interns. I was talking to her all day, all night. e-mails at nighttime for the next day, like 10 p.m. at night."
Lalani, a Canadian native, says she put in roughly 50-hour weeks during her stint, doing various tasks ranging from data-entry to sewing, reports say.
"You're like an employee, except you're not getting paid," Lalani said. "They're kind of mean to you. Other interns have cried. I'd see a lot of kids crying doing coffee runs, photocopying stuff."
Although Lalani is suing the Olsens' company, she says she never worked directly with them, but saw them occasionally. "They're really nice people," she told New York Post. "They were never mean to anyone. They're business people."
Still, interns who worked for Dualstar were reportedly exempt from minimum-wage requirements and did not receive college credits for their work.
When approached with questions about the lawsuit, a Dualstar spokeswoman said the company was not yet aware and declined to comment on its intern program.
