Phone psychic sues for wages, overtime

SEATTLE – A woman who spent years telling fortunes on a 900-number hot line is suing the National Psychic Network, claiming the company broke the law by failing to pay her minimum wage and overtime.

“I was a sweatshop psychic,” Diane London, a former Seattle-area resident who now lives in the San Francisco Bay area, writes in her autobiography.

London, who eventually lost her job, filed a lawsuit in King County Superior Court on Thursday, seeking unspecified damages.

The National Psychic Network, one of the biggest companies of its kind, counters that London was an independent contractor and therefore was not eligible.

London has already won a decision from the state Employment Security Department awarding her unemployment pay.

“As soon as she started talking to me, I thought this was a good case,” attorney John Scannell told The Seattle Times.

“Nobody ever challenges it because it never occurs to people,” said Scannell, who has represented exotic dancers, computer techies and a host of other independent contractors.

London started working for the Boca Raton, Fla.-based National Psychic Network in the early ‘90s, making calls from her Seattle-area home, with brief stints in California.

“I’m a love expert and also the pet psychic,” she said. “And I am very psychic.”

The job entails a lot of sitting by the phone and waiting for calls, which the National Psychic Network routes to stay-at-home psychics all over the country.

She earned 15 cents to 30 cents a minute, out of the $2-per minute or more charged by the National Psychic Network, she said.

Initially, London fielded 30 or more phone calls a day and earned about $3,000 a month – enough to win some company awards.

During about 2002, things started changing, thanks in part to a rival psychic-hotline company best known for its spokeswoman, Miss Cleo, the turbaned, faux-Jamaican woman advertising herself as an “authentic shaman” on late-night commercials.

The Federal Trade Commission sued the companies behind the hot line, Access Resource Services Inc. and Psychic Readers Network Inc., for fraudulent billing. And whispers spread that Miss Cleo’s stable of psychics were reading from scripts – a no-no in the business.

“It gave all the people on the psychic line a black eye,” London said.

Around that time, a new manager came on board at the National Psychic Network and tightened the reins. Among the new requirements, psychics had to be available for readings at all hours and answer calls within two rings or risk a reduction in their call volume.

Other changes: The manager gave strict orders to avoid talking about certain topics and told them to always give “happy readings.”

The manager complained about the way London did her readings and about her “sleepy voice.”

Soon, calls came less frequently. Eventually, she got as few as four or five a day and earned less than $14,000 during her last full year there.

“It got to the point where I was barely making a living,” London said. “I was essentially a prisoner in my own house just to survive.”

London claims she was fired after jokingly warning she was going to get back at management by burning black candles.

Neither the psychic manager in Boca Raton nor a lawyer representing the company in Seattle returned calls for comment.

Scannell argues that by piling on more and more post-Cleo controls, management converted London from an independent contractor to an employee.

The amount of control is crucial. To call workers independent contractors, bosses have to keep their hands off as much as possible. Increase the amount of control too much and the workers become employees, said Mark Busto, an attorney and secretary of the Washington State Bar’s Labor and Employment Law section.

Scannell says he’s confident about the case.

As for London, she’s home in San Rafael, Calif., burning green candles – green, she said, for money.