Reality TV and the recession

It was kind of inevitable really. Reality TV has become all-pervasive, with shows from jungles on islands in the South Pacific to studios in Europe and the US. Now the Fox network has hit on a new idea - letting employees of small businesses decide which one of their colleagues will be laid off, and turning the whole thing into a reality TV show. The show will be called, you guessed it, "Someone's Gotta Go".

According to this report in the Sydney Morning Herald, each episode will feature a company with about 15 or 20 employees that needs to cut costs. Instead of the manager deciding who is made redundant, the company will let employees make the decision (after revealing employees' salaries).

So is this a way to make the grim reality of the recession interesting, or is it, to borrow a quote from the Sydney Morning Herald's article, laughing at someone else's pain and misery? According to the article, Fox says that everyone who participates knows fully what they are doing, and they have had no trouble finding companies willing to participate.

From a legal point of view, it would be pretty hard to justify any redundancy decided by the whims of co-workers (rather than by management, using objective criteria such as skills, qualifications and experience). Perhaps one of the conditions of going ahead is that you agree not to bring a claim - the report states that Fox has said the laid off worker will get a small severance, presumably in exchange for signing a settlement agreement.

If the worker doesn't sign a settlement agreement when they are made redundant, though, it could be legally difficult to stop them suing their employer, even if they agreed before going on the show that they wouldn't. And the employer would have little chance of defending a claim that the worker's selection for redundancy (and therefore their dismissal) was unfair.

Regardless of the legal merits, you can't help wondering whether all employees in participating companies genuinely consent to this. If your employer and your colleagues are keen but you refuse, are you not setting yourself up to be made redundant or dispensed with in some other way?

Call me squeamish, but doesn't this go just a little bit too far?

 

Greg Cain

Greg Cain is an employment lawyer at Minter Ellison Rudd Watts.

 

 

 

Photo: Celebrity Treasure Island contestants Nicky Watson and Jayne Kiely with camera crew.