@bkcunningham Perhaps an argument could be made, that upon mutual agreement, an employer and an employee could decide that the employee would take a lower wage in exchange for job training. Unpaid internships are certainly legal but the wage and hour laws are pretty clear. I’m not absolutely, 100% sure, but unless your job allows your employer to pay you less than minimum wage, the way it is with waiters and waitresses, for example, and internships and other special categories, no one can “opt out” of following federal labor laws.
And these things can get kind of complicated, but they are pretty well regulated. For example, when I was in graduate school, at U.T. Austin, I was a teaching assistant. The compensation for T.A.s was the stipend and the ability to pay in-state tuition rates if you were an out of state student. I was already paying my tuition at in-state rates and the University was under no obligation to compensate me, in cash, the difference between what I would have saved if I were an out of state student able to pay in-state rates. I just didn’t and couldn’t benefit from that part of a T.A.s “compensation package.”