While presenting my paper at the Console-ing Passions conference in 2025, my fire alarm went off. I was at home in North Bay, Ontario, an eighteen-hour drive north of Atlanta, Georgia. I had been excited by the possibility of travelling to Atlanta, a city RuPaul likens to butter: “salty, with a bit of sweetness … meant to be savored” (2024, 2). Say what you will about RuPaul, but I love butter and wanted to see Atlanta for myself. Instead, I was on-camera at home, anxiously presenting a paper about reality TV casting and media conglomerates, while a fire alarm blared in the background. 

Why was I at home instead of in the Madea Conference Room at Georgia State University as planned? On April 15, 2025, the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) issued a travel advisory: “CAUT strongly recommends that academic staff travel to the U.S. only if essential and necessary.” While encouraging all Canadian academics to avoid non-essential travel to the United States, the advisory outlined which academics should “exercise particular caution,” including those who are citizens of, or “have passport stamps evidencing recent travel to,” countries “where there are diplomatic tensions with the U.S.” and / or are “identified in media reports as likely to be subject to a travel ban.” Academics “who have expressed negative opinions about the current U.S. administration or its policies” and “those whose research could be seen as being at odds with the position of the current U.S. administration” were cautioned explicitly, alongside trans academics and those “whose travel documents indicate a sex other than their sex assigned at birth” (Canadian Association of University Teachers 2025). Whether you noticed or not, there were fewer Canadian academics at American conferences this year; I was not the only one. 

Thankfully, I was allowed to present my work-in-progress virtually. I fielded insightful questions from attendees in Atlanta that still have me thinking. Those of us who presented virtually at the conference could not access the other panels out of legitimate concern for who might view the streams featuring so many critical, feminist, anti-oppression scholars. In addition to the myriad coercive pressures and material threats facing students, faculty, departments, research funding, and universities in the United States, scholars in Canada are also seeing repercussions on our mobility, knowledge dissemination, academic freedom, scholarly community-building and cross-pollination, among other effects. CAUT’s specific cautions illustrate how scholars in Canada who are associated with countries, bodies, identities, and perspectives deemed threatening by the current American administration are especially impacted, even outside of the United States. 

The research that I presented virtually at Console-ing Passions 2025 focused on casting, conglomerates, and troubling working conditions within a subset of American reality TV shows released in 2024, specifically dating and competition series with a new cast every season. The fingerprints of the current President and former reality TV host Donald J. Trump appear in this realm as well. On December 11 2024, the Minnesota branch of the National Labor Review Board (NLRB)—an independent federal agency that enforces the National Labor Relations Act—issued a Complaint stating that contestants on Netflix’s Love Is Blind are employees, not independent contractors, and thus should have access to employee protections, including minimum wage and the possibility of unionizing (National Labor Review Board 2024). The NLRB cited numerous labor violations committed by production, including threatening “anyone who leaves the show early with a potential $50,000 fine” (Mumford 2024, para. 20), as well as contractual terms related to confidentiality and exclusivity clauses. Headlines covering the Complaint predicted systemic change for on-camera laborers across the reality TV industry: “‘Love Is Blind’ cast are employees, labor board says. Could a reality TV union be next?” (Bowman 2024), and “Labor Board Classifies ‘Love Is Blind’ Contestants as Employees: The National Labor Relations Board’s case against the Netflix hit could have ripple effects across the reality TV industry” (Jacobs 2024b). 

While this NLRB complaint was a promising development for those who labor in the reality TV industry, the ruling must be approved by the federal National Labor Review Board which is itself under threat as Amazon, SpaceX, Starbucks, and Trader Joe’s—companies that collectively “have been charged with hundreds of violations of workers’ organizing rights”—are engaged in legal battles in which they argue that the NLRB is unconstitutional (Rhinehart and McNicholas 2024, para. 8). While these legal efforts are predicted to fail, Trump began paralyzing the NLRB by another means when he fired the Board’s General Counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, and board member Gwynne A. Wilcox on January 27, 2025 (Wiessner 2025). Notably, Wilcox was the first Black woman to serve on the NLRB in its 90-year history (National Labor Review Board n.d.). Five days later, Trump fired NLRB Deputy General Counsel Jessica Rutter, leaving the federal board without quorum (Lebowich, Fox, and Kratochvil 2025). While lower courts found Wilcox’s dismissal to be unlawful (California Attorney General’s Office 2025), and she was briefly reinstated, the Supreme Court intervened, blocking her reinstatement (Trump v. Wilcox 2025). In 2025, companies facing NLRB investigations, including the production companies that create Love is Blind—Delirium TV and Kinetic Content—have benefited from the lack of quorum, as the Board has been inoperative for nearly seven of eight months. 

(Slide #2)[1]

A Trump appointee to the NLRB is now Chair and the President nominated two new “management-friendly” appointees on July 17, 2025, but they have yet to be approved by the Senate (National Labor Relations Board 2025; Rosenfeld 2025; White House 2025). The precedent-setting NLRB Complaint that buoyed hope for many cast members in the reality TV industry has not progressed. The producers have denied any wrongdoing and will litigate the case before an administrative law judge (ALJ), though the hearing has been repeatedly rescheduled. If they lose, they can appeal the ALJ’s decision to the national NLRB which is on track to have Trump appointees holding the balance of power. Given the “management-friendly” stance of the Trump administration so far (Rosenfeld 2025), it seems likely that reality TV cast members will continue to be classified as “participants” and denied legal employee protections for years to come, given that NLRB members serve five-year staggered terms and should not be removed without cause.

Since 2020, reality TV cast members from various American series have filed lawsuits alleging workplace violations including unregulated pay and hours, sexual assault, false imprisonment, harassment, racism, excessive alcohol consumption, and inadequate provision of food, water, sleep, and medical care (Jacobs 2024a; The Associated Press 2024). If the NLRB fails to extend legal labor protections to reality TV cast members, these workers will be forced to continue relying on privatized forms of recourse, including lawsuits and the Unscripted Cast Advocacy Network (UCAN). The latter is a private foundation staffed by volunteers and created by a former Love Is Blind (2020-present) cast member “to provide legal support and mental health resources to current, past, and future unscripted cast members while advocating for improved industry labor practices and ethical treatment within the reality television industry” (UCAN, 2025a). While UCAN’s goals are vital, privatized “solutions” run by volunteers and funded via “donate” links extend the precarity faced by many reality TV cast members. 

(Slide #3[2])

The need for legal, mental health, and advocacy supports highlight the consequences of reality TV for some former cast members and the stakes of further entrenching the industry as it presently exists. The United States (and Canada) might look to the United Kingdom where a parliamentary inquiry considered “production companies’ duty of care to participants,” asking “whether enough support is offered both during and after filming, and whether there is a need for further regulatory oversight in this area” (UK Parliament Committee 2019). In 2020, the British Broadcasting code was changed such that broadcasters were required to “demonstrate adequate duty of care and a more robust approach to informed consent” (Wood, Newsinger, and Kay 2023, para. 17), enacting structural protections rather than relying on privatized recourse. 

The alarm bells going off during my conference talk resonate across CAUT’s travel advisory, the absent conference participants, the scholars flagged as most at risk, feminist and anti-racist panels too contentious to stream safely, deliberately gutted labor safeguards, as well as privatized supports and litigation rather than the enforcement of legal workplace protections. As scholars who work toward social justice, we know that constrained participation and systemic exclusions are perennial problems, but these disparate and, at times, privileged examples offer glimpses at how quickly public systems designed to protect can be compromised—from academic freedom to the NLRB. What remains are privatized substitutes: isolation instead of scholarly exchange, litigation instead of regulation, vacant regulatory agencies instead of federal labor protections, and individual recourse instead of systemic change. 

 

References 

The Associated Press. 2024. “MrBeast Named in California Lawsuit Over Reality TV Show Beast Games.” CBC News. September 19. https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/beast-games-lawsuit-1.7328010

Bowman, Emma. 2024. “‘Love Is Blind’ cast are employees, labor board says. Could a reality TV union be next?” NPR, December 17. https://www.npr.org/2024/12/17/nx-s1-5229111/love-is-blind-housewives-reality-labor-union

California Attorney General's Office. 2025. “Court Finds That Trump's Termination of NLRB Member Gwynne Wilcox Was Unlawful and Void.” Press release, March 7. https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/court-finds-trump%E2%80%99s-termination-nlrb-member-gwynne-wilcox-was-unlawful-and-void

Canadian Association of University Teachers. 2025. “CAUT Advises Academics Against Non-Essential Travel to US.” CAUT, April 14. https://www-archive.caut.ca/latest/2025/04/caut-advises-academics-against-non-essential-travel-us

Jacobs, Julia. 2024a. “Reality TV or Court TV? Lawsuits Test Limits of Outrageous Behavior.” New York Times, June 9. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/09/arts/reality-tv-lawsuits.html

Jacobs, Julia. 2024b. “Labor Board Classifies ‘Love Is Blind’ Contestants as Employees: The National Labor Relations Board's case against the Netflix hit could have ripple effects across the reality TV industry.” New York Times, December 11. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/11/arts/television/love-is-blind-nlrb-employees-union.html

Lebowich, Michael, Joshua Fox, and Michael Kratochvil. 2025. “UPDATED – NLRB Shake-Up Continues: Trump Fired Acting General Counsel.” Labor Relations Update, February 3. https://www.laborrelationsupdate.com/2025/02/nlrb-shake-up-continues-trump-fired-acting-general-counsel/

Mumford, Tracy. 2024. “F.B.I. Chief to Step Out of ‘the Fray,’ and Housing's Terrible Year.” The Headlines, December 12. https://www.nytimes.com/column/the-headlines

National Labor Relations Board. 2024. “Kinetic Content LLC and IATSE Local 871.” Case No. 18-CA-322098. https://www.nlrb.gov/case/18-CA-322098

National Labor Relations Board. n.d. “Gwynne A. Wilcox.” Accessed August 19 2025. https://www.nlrb.gov/bio/gwynne-a-wilcox#:~:text=expiration%20in%202028.-,Ms.,as%20Chair%20of%20the%20NLRB

National Labor Relations Board. 2025. “President Appoints Marvin E. Kaplan NLRB Chairman.” January 21. https://www.nlrb.gov/news-outreach/news-story/president-appoints-marvin-e-kaplan-nlrb-chairman-0

Rhinehart, Lynn, and Celine McNicholas. 2024. “What's Behind the Corporate Effort to 

Kneecap the National Labor Relations Board?” Economic Policy Institute, March 7. 

https://www.epi.org/blog/whats-behind-the-corporate-effort-to-kneecap-the-national-labor-relations-board-spacex-amazon-trader-joes-and-starbucks-are-trying-to-have-the-nlrb-declared-unconstitutional/

Rosenfeld, Jake. 2025. “Trump administration has proven no friend to organized labor, from attacking federal unions to paralyzing the National Labor Relations Board.” The Conversation, August 20.https://theconversation.com/trump-administration-has-proven-no-friend-to-organized-labor-from-attacking-federal-unions-to-paralyzing-the-national-labor-relations-board-263176

RuPaul. 2024. The House of Hidden Meanings: A Memoir. New York: Dey Street Books.

Trump v. Wilcox, No. 24A966 (U.S. Apr. 9, 2025). https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/040925zr_p8k0.pdf

UCAN. 2025a. “About Us.” https://theucanfoundation.org/about

UCAN. 2025b. “UCAN Foundation.” https://theucanfoundation.org/

UK Parliament Committee. 2019. “Reality TV Inquiry.” https://committees.parliament.uk/work/6345/reality-tv-inquiry/.

White House. 2025. “Nominations Sent to the Senate.” July 17. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/nominations-sent-to-the-senate-d743/.

Wiessner, Daniel. 2025. “Trump paralyzes US labor board by firing Democratic member.” Reuters, January 28. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-fires-us-labor-board-member-hobbling-agency-amid-legal-battles-2025-01-28/.

Wood, Helen, Jack Newsinger, and Jilly Kay. 2023. “How Unions Could Help Reality TV Cast and Crew Win Better Pay and Working Conditions.” The Conversation, September 8. https://theconversation.com/how-unions-could-help-reality-tv-cast-and-cr...