Ex-AOL Chat Room Hosts Sue for Pay
Three former California chat room volunteers are demanding back pay plus interest in a lawsuit filed against America Online in an expansion of a labor dispute that could dramatically alter the way such Internet services do business.
Seeking to take advantage of the state’s worker-friendly labor laws, the suit was filed in San Jose this week as a proposed class action on behalf of an estimated 5,000 current and former AOL chat room hosts in California.
A spokesman for AOL declined to comment on the suit or a similar suit filed in New Jersey, saying the company had not yet been served.
But AOL continues to use volunteers for its online chat rooms and is “vigorously contesting” the pay demands of volunteers in New York who filed suit in May 1999 under the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act, said AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham.
The volunteers might get free Internet service but are otherwise unpaid, a violation of state and federal labor laws, said Mark R. Thierman, a San Francisco lawyer representing the plaintiffs.
AOL requires the volunteers to work a minimum number of hours, usually four-hour stints, three or four days a week, Thierman said.
“You are given a schedule, an assignment,” he said. “It’s everything but a paycheck.”
The suit demands minimum wage, which at $6.25 in California is $1.10 more than the federal minimum wage.
The suit also seeks four years of back pay, one year more than the federal law allows. The California volunteers also want premium pay for any time worked in excess of eight hours a day, as required under state law. Under federal law, overtime pay kicks in only after 40 hours are worked in a week.
Parent company AOL Time Warner Inc. also was named in the California suit.
