Contestants on Netflix reality series Love Is Blind are employees, not contractors, according to a new ruling today from the National Labor Review Board—meaning that, among other things, they have the right to unionize as part of their ongoing conflicts with producers of the show.
The NLRB ruling comes in the midst of an increasingly fractious split between the show's producers and at least some of its contestants, who allege that they've been treated unfairly during their participation in the massively popular reality series, including getting hit with legal issues when they complain they've been treated unfairly. Production company Kinetic Content and other producers have long stated that their contestants are contractors, not employees, and thus lack certain protections; per The New York Times, the NLRB clearly disagrees, with its regional office in Minnesota issuing a complaint tonight granting contestants the federal protections inherent to employment, and hitting producers with a number of labor violations, including unlawful contractual terms related to confidentiality and noncompete provisions.
All of this can be seen as a new government front in the brewing war between reality TV producers and reality TV contestants, which got a big shot in the arm last year when former Real Housewife Bethenny Frankel began organizing efforts to get participants in reality shows better pay and more protections for their work, which generates huge profits for networks like Bravo. Not surprisingly, Frankel's lawyer, Bryan Freedman, also represents contestants like Love Is Blind's Renee Poche, who says she was misled and punished by producers of the series for speaking out; Freedman issued a statement today in response to the NLRB ruling, saying that, "Cast members are stripped of fundamental rights, gagged from speaking out, denied legal recourse, paid virtually nothing, subjected to the ever-present threat of ruinous liquidated damages and prevented from working elsewhere,” he said. “These practices must stop.”
