The end of volunteer labor(MTG related)

In My Humble Opinion
1

To be clear this is about for profit companies using volunteers. I don’t expect non-profits to be affected.

There is currently a lawsuit in play involving judges for volunteer to oversee Magic the Gathering tournaments.

Some basic facts/terminology.
[ul]
[li]Magic the Gathering(MTG) is a collectable card game. For those unfamiliar think Pokemon for an older age group.[/li][li]Wizards of the Coast(WoTC) is the company that makes MTG[/li][li]Hasbro is the parent company for WoTC[/li][li]DCI is the office rules body for MTG competitive play. They are part of WoTC.[/li][li]DCI runs the Judge Program and certifies people as Judges[/li][li]The Judge Program is volunteer, people are not ‘paid to participate’[/li][li]Tournament Organizers(TO’s) are individuals or businesses that host competitive tournaments.[/li][li]A competitive event can range from 8 people at a small store to thousands of people at a convention center[/li][li]TO’s ‘hire’ judges in the form of compensation for competitive events[/li][li]Compensation can include a packs of cards worth 4 dollars to cards worth hundreds of dollars[/ul][/li][li]Compensation is prearranged. Judges know what is being offered before they agree to sign up.[/li]
The problem is if they are ‘employed’ their compensation would often be in violation of minimum wage laws and labor rules.

A group of judges are suing WoTC because they feel they have been taken advantage of. They are seeking payment for their work beyond the compensation they’d agreed to.

This is in some ways very simple but in other ways very far reaching and damaging to all sorts of conventions.

I see both sides of the issue, while I would like to side with people being paid a minimum wage for their time, the entertainment industry model of these events can not support that type of payroll.

This will roll over into other conventions. Any type of ‘con’ uses a similar model. Comic Con’s, Anime Conventions, Computer Gaming, Star Trek Events, Artist signings, etc. These events almost always offer things like free access to events for time spent volunteering ie, we’ll give you a weekend pass to the even if you spend a day as an ‘enforcer’ helping people find where they are going, watching for theft, telling people not to run.

An event like San Diego Comic Con could conceivable pay volunteers minimum wage to do this, but it would bankrupt just about any other convention. They can’t possibly charge a high enough price for these events and still get attendance.

I think they net effect will be conventions as a concept die.

How should this be handled?

2

I don’t know much about this lawsuit specifically, but I doubt that any ruling would destroy conventions in general. The model of a large, for-profit company that operates year-round certifying people as judges and then hiring them out to tournaments for less than minimum wage is a really different beast than a partnership or small corporation that puts on a single event with a lot of volunteers, which is how cons operate. I would expect any ruling to only be relevant to someone doing something similar to WOTC, not to volunteers at events in general. Most legal cases are narrow in focus.

3

This is kinda of a fall out from the 2013 decision on unpaid internships. The legal implications are expanding into other logical and similar situations.

The WoTC lawsuit is being used as a model for other lawsuits that are being put together now. A few convention organizers are aware of pending litigation. Other firms are waiting to see how the WoTC lawsuit plays out before filing.

4

why would they have to be “employed”? Surely they fall into that area of pseudo-employment called “contractors/freelancers”?

In events I’m familiar with put on by non-profit clubs and the like they always pay the judges for their time and cover their expenses (travel, hotels, food, etc.) but not as an employee, as a contractor. At the actual event most of the work is done by volunteers. Note I stated non-profit. If it was a for-profit organization, I’d expect it to shell out some money to pay some contractor to provide people to do the labor. Why would anyone expect otherwise?