Legal Question in Employment Law in New Jersey

My question deals with possible class action litigation against Tutor.com and its parent company, IAC, which acquired Tutor.com at the end of 2014. I worked for Tutor.com for 3.5 years until the middle of 2015 and was one of their highest rated and paid tutors. At the start of this year, a new supervisor was assigned to me who began severely criticizing my performance on completely specious reasons. Eventually I was terminated after I charged the management of Tutor.com with conspiracy to fire me as a cost saving measure and let them know that my records of employment over 3.5 years clearly showed a clear pattern of underpayments each and every month. They were livid that I had managed to save all of my tutoring records as their online tutoring system makes it essentially impossible for staff to record the details of their tutoring activities. They then demanded I delete all of my records with threat of legal action if I failed to do so. When you consider that Tutor.com employs a few thousand tutors at any given moment, the totality of underpayments could easily amount to millions of dollars on an annual basis. Moreover, Tutor.com hires every tutor as an "independent contractor" and then makes it impossible for its tutors to communicate with each other. Putting aside the fact that they want and advertise to the public that the majority of their tutors have advanced college degrees along with significant teaching experience, they start tutors in a probationary mode for 6+ months and pay only $9 per hour. Even after working for a few years a given tutor will still make less than $18 per hour and you are precluded from working more than 30 hours per week allowing Tutor.com to permanently classify all tutors as part-time and not have to pay any benefits. Meanwhile, clients of Tutor.com are charged $40+ per hour for services rendered.

In my sincere assessment, Tutor.com runs what amounts to an academic sweatshop and in a very sinister and despicable manner deprives all of its tutoring staff of any semblance of fair labor practices and protection.

When one becomes a tutor for Tutor.com, you are forced to sign a contract than stipulates that any legal action you may pursue against their company must be adjudicated in NY. This also gives Tutor.com another huge labor advantage since tutors are located throughout the US and consequently most would never have the resources to pursue any legal claims against Tutor.com/IAC.

I am more than willing to share all of my tutoring records with any attorney/firm who would be potentially interested in pursuing a class action labor suit against Tutor.com/IAC. I am easily within travel distance of NYC.

I thank you in advance for any help/advice you can offer in this matter.

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