Love Is Blind season-seven contestant Hannah claimed to have quit her job to be on the show — but really, she just got a new position. The National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint against Netflix’s Love Is Blind on December 11, in which it referred to the contestants/participants/cast members on the reality show as actually none of those things, but instead as employees. The complaint was filed due to charges submitted by former contestants Renee Poche (season five) and Nick Thompson (season two), which resulted in the NLRB investigating the show’s production companies, Kinetic Entertainment and Delirium TV. The complaint claims that the production companies committed labor violations when they “intentionally misclassified its Love Is Blind cast members … as non-employee ‘participants,’†which deprived them of their workers’ rights.
In the context of the ever-protracted “reality reckoning,†this filing marks a major step forward. Most notably, it allows for the possibility of unionization by reality TV participants. Previously, the NLRB has not engaged with reality TV. “Mark Geragos and I, along with our legal teams, have been working closely with the NLRB for over a year and are thrilled that this collaboration has resulted in a monumental filing that promises to change the reality TV industry forever,†Poche’s attorney Bryan Freedman said in a statement. “The practices identified by the NLRB in its complaint against Delirium are ubiquitous in this space. Make no mistake, the reality reckoning is alive and well. This is not the last shoe to drop. Standby.†Well, this is more dramatic than an episode of Love Is Blind.