Yes, absolutely. As you said, like you, I volunteer a lot. Just to be clear, volunteering exists. It's something that is important to our society, and I'm not suggesting that.... But like I said, there is a difference between a true volunteer and a misclassified employee.
Unfortunately, there's not really any statutory guidance on this, and many of the cases are old, but generally speaking, there are a few points to it. If someone is volunteering, it's going to be in the advancement of a civic, charitable, religious or humanitarian purpose. I'd also suggest that volunteering is not going to happen for a private for-profit company. As you alluded to, I think volunteers are folks that are performing this work for civic, charitable or other purposes, without the expectation of remuneration. There are other factors that some of the cases have looked at, such as the extent to which the person performing the service used the arrangement as being in pursuit of their livelihood and the extent to which the agency receives a benefit from their students in terms of looking at how the arrangement was initiated and the power imbalance between them.
There's not a clear outline in law. A lot of these cases are old. They're from before I was born. They're from before the rise of unpaid internships. I think it's an open question as to how a court would address this question right now, but it is a bit of a smell test in figuring out what is a true volunteer. Certainly, when you have a program structure that directly links the payment of money to the hours you work, that, to me, does not look like volunteering.