Yelpers Sue Yelp, Claim They’re ‘Unpaid Writers’ & Want Off the ‘Slave Ship’
A group of Yelpers have filed a California class action lawsuit against Yelp, claiming they are actually unpaid employees who deserve compensation for their hard work. According to the lawsuit, a “vast majority of the ratings, reviews, and photos posted on [Yelp’s] websites are created and supplied by a large and ever-growing stable of non-wage-paid writers.” Now, these “non-wage-paid writers” are seeking “just compensation of wages, benefits, and reimbursement for the reviews they created.” The plaintiff argues that Yelp could not exist as a profitable business without their free labor.
Flabbergasted? Just you wait, it gets better worse. The suit goes so far as to compare Yelp to heartless slave owners. Seriously: “Business journal commentators have compared said business practices to a 21st-century galley slave ship with pirates banging the drum to keep up the fast pace and to fill the pockets of their stockholders with treasure. . . and with ‘overhead that would shame an antebellum plantation.'”
Nevermind the fact that slavery is completely involuntary and a far cry from picky eaters chatting about how their steak came out well-done (and not rare, gasp!) then went home to write about it. I could go further into how these Yelpers have the choice to create a Yelp account in the first place and could stop “working” at any point, but… I’m sure they realize that. Oh God, for the sake of humanity and all that is sane I hope they realize that.
Although, some of the allegations address an issue that’s been brought up before, as in the manipulation of reviews. The case claims that Elite reviewers are punished for creating negative reviews of sponsors, aka businesses that pay for enhancements on their Yelp listings, and that Yelpers can technically be “fired” for not adhering to the site’s “content guidelines.” The plaintiff argues that this makes Yelpers “misclassified employees.”
Yelp has since provided the following statement to Fast Company:
This is a textbook example of a frivolous lawsuit, it is unfortunate the court has to waste its time adjudicating it and we will seek to have it dismissed. The argument that voluntarily using a free service equates to an employment relationship is completely without merit, unsupported by law and contradicted by the dozens of websites like Yelp that consumers use to help one another
