Phone Sex Operators Sue Telepay/USA Chatlines

[EtherealMOD]

Reprinted from the Washington Post

Phone sex advertisements have long been a staple of overnight television, airing in the wee hours between reruns and infomercials when few people are tuned in.
Anyone who’s clicked through the channels during that time knows the format: A 1-900 number flashes across the bottom of the screen in bold yellow text. The soft-focused video shows a nubile woman sprawled across satin bedsheets, smiling in the candlelight and chatting on a landline. Smooth jazz plays in the background. Call me now, she beckons. In reality, those calls are fielded by a small army of contract actors, many of whom work from home and are paid based on how long they keep customers on the phone.

That’s the case with Tele Pay USA, a nationwide phone sex purveyor, hit with a class-action lawsuit in federal court this week alleging it cheated one employee and potentially hundreds of others out of compensation.

On Tuesday, a Tele Pay phone sex worker named Anne Cannon filed a complaint on behalf of herself and her counterparts in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. She says the company, which is based in Glendale, Calif., engaged in a “pattern of intentional manipulation and exploitation” to siphon off workers’ earnings, paying them as little as $4.20 per hour, in violation of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act.


The lawsuit offers a rare glimpse at a misunderstood and frequently mocked business. And it may be the first case alleging unpaid compensation for sex talk workers, plaintiffs’ attorney Brian Mahany told Law.com this week.
“It’s hard to go find people in this line of work,” Mahany said. “I’m sure there are more.”
Mahany said the class action, which must be certified by the court, could wind up including 1,000 current and former phone actors who worked for Tele Pay over the past three years, as Law.com reported.
A representative from Tele Pay did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
Cannon, the plaintiff, is an Orlando resident who said she has worked at Tele Pay since 2008, fielding calls on sex chat lines for a fee that goes directly to the company, according to her complaint. She says Tele Pay has been her only employer during that time.
In a typical week she has dozens of sexually explicit phone conversations with Tele Pay customers, averaging about six minutes per call. At that pace, she is paid 10 cents per minute or $6 per hour to talk, according to the lawsuit. If her average falls below six minutes, her rate drops to as little as 7 cents per minute, bringing her hourly pay to $4.20.
The company, on the other hand, charges callers $5 per minute, bringing in as much as $300 per hour based on a phone sex worker’s labor, the lawsuit says.
Federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. In Florida, where Cannon works, it’s $8.10.
Cannon alleges Tele Pay uses “draconian measures” to suppress workers’ hourly pay rates.
“For example, even if a call lasts only a few seconds and is never verified as a legitimate call from a customer seeking Tele Pay’s services, it is included in her average call length calculation,” the lawsuit says. “This includes prank callers, dropped calls, technical errors, or even silent calls where no caller can be established.”
On top of that, the lawsuit says, Tele Pay deliberately makes it difficult for workers to track their time to make sure they’re being paid properly. Estimates of average call lengths are posted online day by day, but the real figures are calculated in secret, according to the complaint.
On its website, Tele Pay describes itself as a “booking agent” whose job is to “negotiate and book engagements” for the workers, referred to in its employment materials as actors. The company’s home page encourages phone actors to “SIGN UP now!!!” for “the best opportunity for women and men to work from home.”

“Want to be your own boss? Make your own hours?” reads Tele Pay’s site. “Work for yourself! Never have to punch a time clock again.”
Another section of the site reads: “The fun thing about this type of work is you don’t need ANY experience. All you need is the ability to talk, be motivated, and above everything else be CREATIVE and FUN.”
In practice, the lawsuit says, Tele Pay does no negotiating or booking on phone sex workers’ behalf. Instead, it says, Tele Pay merely facilitates the sexually explicit calls.
When phone sex workers do enlist with the company, Cannon alleges, a murky figure known simply as “Don” gives employees advice on how to keep customers on the line.
“He reminds them repeatedly, cajoling them over and over with the telephone sex talk mantra — ‘Remember, it’s not HOW MANY calls you take, but HOW LONG you keep these guys on the phone!'” the law



Workers are also bombarded with daily emails from Tele Pay urging them to work extra hours, according to the complaint. Cannon says Tele Pay has required her to work more than 40 hours per week, never providing her with a means to accurately track her hours and never paying her overtime.
The lawsuit seeks three years’ worth of allegedly unpaid hourly wages, unpaid overtime and other off-the-clock wages on behalf of Tele Pay workers, which the complaint says are made up almost entirely of women.
“Women are a core part of both the national and global economy. Unfortunately, the abuses and financial exploitation they experience often remain invisible,” the lawsuit reads. “This is especially true for workers in female-dominate sectors of the economy such as sex talk workers. They are hidden from the public eye.”

[EtherealMOD]

Welp it looks like they won! According to the lawyer who worked for the pso's who sued Telepass/USA Chatlines the Court Imposes Full Measure of Wage Theft Damages in Tele Pay Phone Sex Case

After a hearing last month, U.S. District Court Judge Andre Birotte Jr. ruled that Tele Pay was paying its phone sex operators just $4.20 per hour. A company that can make $300 an hour but only pay workers a couple bucks. That didn’t sound fair to us and thankfully the court agreed.

The court also ruled that the company failed to pay for “off the clock” work and to pay overtime pay for hours worked in excess of 40 hours.

Tele Pay’s website suggested that it was simply acting as a booking agent for the operators. Fortunately, courts don’t have to listen to a company’s simple explanations or labels. Whether or not your employer says you are an independent contractor or employee, courts must look to the actual facts and not mere labels. If you are an employee, you are entitled to minimum wage, pay for all hours worked and time and one half pay for all hours worked in excess of 40 hours a week.

Tele Pay says that it is a “booking agent offering its services to actors who seek to provide entertainment services.” The “services” it offers was allegedly “negotiating and booking engagements for the actors.” There was no negotiation. We claimed the operators were employees of Tele Pay hired to field calls on Tele Pay’s phone lines and engage in explicit chat for a fee paid directly to Tele Pay.

The operators also claimed that they were required to participate in training calls, company meetings and sit by their phone during their shift even if there were no incoming calls. Despite the company’s claim that it was a mere agent, the court felt otherwise.

Operators were paid just 7¢ per minute. Seven cents! If an operator could keep a caller on the phone for longer than 6 minutes, he or she could theoretically earn as much as 15¢ per minute. In reality, however, the operators believe that the company would place hang up calls to operators who were making “too much money”. The hang up would bring down the average call time ad keep the operator at 7 cents per minute.

As if fifteen cents ($0.15) per minute for a company billing $5.00 per minute could ever be “too much money.”

The court ruled in our client’s favor and awarded full damages and attorney’s fees.

This is a big deal but I'm sure not many people know about this or that it's possible to win a lawsuit like this. I wonder if there are any other lawsuits regarding phone sex companies or camsites that are headed for court?

[Sadexx]

Oh wow.

[SuperPookie]

I had not heard of this and also wonder if there are more going on behind the scenes.