Saturday 13 June 2009

Chutzpah

If a reality TV show sent you to a tropical island filled with gorgeous women (and men), you'd probably not be too happy about being voted off the island. But would it occur to you to sue for wrongful dismissal? It never would have occurred to me, but perhaps I'm insufficiently Gallic.
Reality television faces a bleak future in France after contestants who spent 12 days flirting with the opposite sex on a sun-drenched island won the right to be treated as salaried workers.

In a ground-breaking ruling, the supreme court in France awarded three contestants on the French version of the programme Temptation Island compensation of about €11,000 (£9,500) each. The judges ruled that the trio were entitled to full employment contracts — including overtime, holidays and even damages for wrongful dismissal upon elimination from the show.
...
The case was brought by Anthony Brocheton, Marie Adamiak and Arno Laize, who said that their participation in l’Ile de la Tentation amounted to a job in terms of French labour laws, which stipulate that no one can be made to work more than 35 hours a week. The programme involves scantily clad men and women testing the faithfulness of competing couples with massages, dances and beach walks on an island off Tulum on the Mexican coast.
...
The supreme court upheld the lower tribunal judgment, which said: “Tempting a person of the opposite sex requires concentration and attention.”

There's a reason economists make fun of French labour laws.

1 comment:

  1. "Tempting a person of the opposite sex requires concentration and attention"

    It's a dirty job but someone has to do it (and should get paid for it.

    ReplyDelete