Many will have heard of (as opposed to just heard for which be thankful!) Emma Amelia Pearl Czikai who sang on Britain's Got Talent in May of 2009; not because of her singing but because she is suing the producers of the show for discrimination in an employment tribunal. She calls the show "backdoor modern slavery", guilty of "modern-day barbarism" and acts of "atrocity" against wannabe stars.
What employment lawyers are waiting to see is whether Czikai is entitled to make that claim. To do so she needs to establish herself as an employee and if she fails to do so the tribunal will have no have jurisdiction to hear the claim. Czikai seems to be suggesting that the auditions were a recruitment process in which candidates competed for short-term employment contracts for a road show. As bizarre as this may seem there is a precedent for such a claim in France.
In June 2009 three participants on French version of Temptation Island won their case in front of the French Supreme Court. The Supreme Court held they were entitled to full employment contracts, including compensation for holiday, overtime and notice. The three contestants were awarded around £11,000 each including €8,176 each in overtime on the grounds that they had worked for 24 hours a day. They also won €817 for being denied a holiday, €500 for unfair dismissal and €1,500 for the wrongful termination of their contracts. Each had signed a contract before the show and had received monies in advance.
The facts are very different to the Britain's Got Talent case and so we perhaps shouldn't hold breath in anticipation of an earth shattering finding, but reality TV shows should be cautious in how they proceed from now on.
