Phone Sex Company Tele Pay USA Rung Up with Unpaid Wage Class Action

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Over-the-phone sex-talk purveyor Tele Pay USA is the defendant in a former employee’s proposed class action alleging she and other current and former sex-talk workers are owed unpaid minimum and overtime wages for off-the-clock work. Alleging violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the lawsuit claims the defendant, “through a pattern of intentional manipulation and exploitation,” paid proposed class members as little as $4.20 per hour even though the company can earn as much as $300 per hour based on an employee’s labor. 

The plaintiff alleges she and other phone-sex workers get paid as little as seven cents per minute. When the length of the plaintiff’s calls fall below an average of six minutes per call, the complaint reads, the woman’s hourly pay drops even further. All told, the complaint lays out the details of a system meant to ensure the defendant’s phone sex workers remain helpless when it comes to their jobs. 

“Other factors beyond [the plaintiff’s] control determine her hourly rate, factors dictated and enforced by Tele Pay’s Draconian measures designed to suppress her hourly pay rate,” the lawsuit reads. “For example, even if a call lasts only seconds and is never verified as a legitimate call from a customer seeking Tele Pay’s services, it is included in her average call length calculation. This includes prank callers, dropped calls, technical errors, or even silent calls where no caller can be established.”