A former “Love Is Blind” contestant has accused producers of Netflix’s his relationship present “Love Is Blind” of subjecting contestants to unpaid wages and creating “inhumane working circumstances” in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Courtroom.
Netflix representatives didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark from TheWrap.
Stephen Richardson says in his lawsuit that he and different forged members had been “willfully misclassified workers as impartial contractors regardless of Defendants exercising substantial and extreme management over the way, means and timing of the work” on the present. This included, so the swimsuit says, “exerting full domination over their time, schedule, and their capacity to eat, drink, and sleep, and talk with the surface world through the interval of employment.”
This, the lawsuit argues, qualifies them for protections below California labor regulation, which might entitle them to minimal wages and extra time pay.
The lawsuit additionally accuses the present of intentionally intoxicating them. Forged members had been solely offered recurrently with “alcoholic drinks, comfortable drinks, power drinks, and mixers,” and water and different “hydrating drinks” had been solely made obtainable through the day. The swimsuit says they had been additionally inspired to drink all through the day with out being supplied with meals or water to mitigate the results.
This was achieved, so the lawsuit says, “as a way to preserve a heightened diploma of management and direct the conduct of the Forged into making manipulated selections for the good thing about the exhibits’ leisure worth.”
The lawsuit is filed as a category motion — the category on this case being anybody who signed nondisclosure agreements and different contracts required to seem on the present throughout the 4 years previous to the submitting of Richardson’s lawsuit.
The swimsuit names manufacturing firm Kinetic Content material, Netflix, manufacturing firm Delirium TV and 1-50 unnamed Does as defendants.
The swimsuit seeks recognition of that proposed class, that every one potential members of the category be notified, that the courtroom affirm wage theft and that the practices of meals and alcohol provision are violations of labor legal guidelines. It additionally seeks compensation for misplaced wages, and unspecified punitive damages, in addition to protection of authorized charges and some other damages the the courtroom might discover applicable.
