Former SB Nation Team Site Manager Claims Vox Media Considerably Underpays Workers [UPDATE]
Last Updated on May 8, 2018
Bradley v. Vox Media, Inc.
Filed: September 1, 2017 ◆§ 1:17-CV-01791
A fmr. Colorado Avalanche team site manager's lawsuit takes issue with Vox Media's compensation policies for SB Nation content creators and editors.
Case Updates
August 18, 2020 – $4 Million Settlement Reached
Vox Media, Inc. has agreed to pay $4 million to settle three separate lawsuits, including the proposed class action detailed on this page, filed over claims that hundreds of SB Nation bloggers and staff members were misclassified as independent contractors and deprived of proper overtime wages.
According to the plaintiffs’ unopposed motion for preliminary settlement approval, the settlement “offers the benefit of certain and immediate payment to class members” while sidestepping the uncertainty presented by both prolonged litigation and the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a statement summarizing its defense to the plaintiffs’ claims, Vox Media relayed, in part, that “substantial evidence” shows class members satisfy all the criteria for classification as independent contractors and that many viewed themselves as professional writers often working on a freelance basis. Additionally, the time it took for site managers and contributors to perform the work required for their roles was “far lower” than the estimates provided by the plaintiffs, Vox Media said, among other arguments.
Ultimately, however, Vox “weighed the costs of continued litigation and made a business decision that this settlement amount was reasonable and would enable the company to put these cases behind it and move on,” the motion reads.
Stressed in the motion is that the COVID-19 pandemic made the need for a settlement more urgent given the future of sports coverage online – and the companies that provide such news – will likely remain murky.
“If Vox Media were to face economic difficulties as a result of this disruption to the sports world, it could make it more difficult for Plaintiffs to collect on any judgment in the future,” court documents read.
Under the proposed settlement, which awaits a judge’s preliminary and then final approval, payment will be issued to SB Nation staffers based on weeks worked and a point-based system, tied to whether an individual was a site manager or contributor and whether the individual worked in California, New Jersey or elsewhere in the U.S.
A complete rundown of the proposed deal can be found here.
A former manager of one of Vox Media, Inc.’s myriad SB Nation team-specific websites has filed a proposed collective action against the company alleging it fails to pay its content creators and editors anything resembling proper wages. Filed in the wake of an exceptionally thorough Deadspin exposé in which current and former employees open up about the company’s compensation policies, the 13-page complaint claims Vox Media’s payment practices violate the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), as proposed collective members are allegedly not paid mandatory minimum nor time-and-a-half overtime wages.
The plaintiff behind the suit worked for Vox Media as a site manager for SB Nations’ “Mile High Hockey” website that covers the National Hockey League’s Colorado Avalanche. The woman, who worked in the role from June 2013 through February 2015, alleges she regularly worked 30 to 40 hours per week, and sometimes as many as 50 hours per week during “peak times,” and was only paid $125 per month. In her position, the plaintiff claims she was responsible for publishing five or six articles per week, managing and editing other writers, monitoring search engine optimization data and managing comment sections, among other tasks.
The bulk of the complaint delves into the alleged relationship between Vox Media and its site managers and content creators, explaining the company’s level of control over proposed collective members, i.e., among other aspects, its power to hire and fire, control over work schedules, extent of editorial control, and the absence of any share in ad revenue, is indicative of an employer-employee relationship, rather than that of an independent contractor. From the lawsuit:
The proposed class covered by the lawsuit includes all current or former site managers, managing editors, and similar employees nationwide who worked for Vox Media in its SB Nation business division within the last three years.
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