Here's something to yelp about.
A group of reviewers recently filed a class action lawsuit against Yelp, claiming the company should treat them like employees and pay them for their reviews.
According to Yahoo News, the suit argues that since Yelp's business model and success is dependent on its over 42 million user-submitted reviews, the company technically employs those users.
The suit also claims that while the company has a system of rewarding frequent writers with things like badges, titles, social promotion, free liquor, free food, and free promotional Yelp attire, such as red panties with "Make Me Yelp!" stamped across its bottom, the site "could not exist, nor make its enormous returns, without its domination and control over non-wage writers."
The users are demanding, compensation of wages, benefits, and reimbursement for the reviews they created.
The suit, filed on Oct. 20 in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, claims Yelp misclassifies their employees as volunteers, independent contractors, interns, contributors, freelance writers, reviewers, elites, or Yelpers.
Users have created a website to recruit people and have asked them how many reviews users have written and whether they have declared one of the site's "Elite" users.
"Yelp is a cult like exploiter of labor in violation of federal law and declared to be the 'modern day mafia' by a San Diego judge and 'organized crime' and 'offensive' by a Portland judge," the site wrote.
A representative for Yelp said the company disagrees on the recent charges. Yelp stated the company's platform is set up for users to both write reviews and gain information about restaurants they want to visit in the future using the information provided from other Yelpers.
"This is a textbook example of a frivolous lawsuit, it is unfortunate the court has to waste its time adjudicating it and we will seek to have it dismissed," Yelp wrote in a statement. "The argument that voluntarily using a free service equates to an employment relationship is completely without merit, unsupported by law and contradicted by the dozens of websites like Yelp that consumers use to help one another."
