Season 15 of CBS’s “Big Brother” series is underway, and it’s got more issues this season than any of the prior seasons. Racial comments seem to be in abundance, and it doesn’t appear to be stopping anytime soon.
According to published reports, two contestants have been fired from their jobs because of the stupid things they’ve said on the show. Here’s the catch: the contestants don’t know they are unemployed and won’t until the end of the season because CBS isolates the participants from contact with the outside world until their work for the show is finished.
Last season, one of the participant’s houses burned down and CBS didn’t tell her until she was released from the show. That was horrifying. I’d be ready to throttle someone if my house burned down and I didn’t know about it until weeks or months later, or a family member died, or whatever happened and I didn’t know about it for weeks or months.
In the case of these two participants whose jobs were terminated by their companies, their companies have labor laws to contend with, with regards to final paychecks, etc. For instance, when is the day of termination? The day the company announced it publicly (also a possible legal problem for the company), or the day that the employee is formally notified that their employment has been terminated? There will be a legal challenge there.
It would have been better for the companies to announce that they were conducting a review of the employee conduct on the show, and then leave it at that until the employee returned to work, instead of making a political statement and violating who knows how many state and company employee termination procedures.
Now, is CBS vulnerable to lawsuits claiming damages from their contestants for not notifying them of issues regarding home, family, work, etc? I’m sure CBS requires all contestants to sign waivers up the wazoo, for everything and anything.
Interesting story.
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