In the first episode of this season’s “Hell’s Kitchen,” the 16 aspiring chefs clamber out of a bus and canter into the kitchen of Gordon Ramsay’s reality show restaurant like convicts on a jailbreak. If the current season is like earlier ones, that is not so far from the truth.

“They locked me in a hotel room for three or four days” before production started, said Jen Yemola, a Pennsylvania pastry chef who was on the 2007 season of “Hell’s Kitchen,” a cooking competition. “They took all my books, my CDs, my phone, any newspapers. I was allowed to leave the room only with an escort. It was like I was in prison.”

Long workdays and communication blackouts are largely the rule for contestants on reality shows, a highly lucrative genre that has evolved arguably into Hollywood’s sweatshop. With no union representation, participants on reality series are not covered by Hollywood workplace rules governing meal breaks, minimum time off between shoots or even minimum wages. Most of them, in fact, receive little to no pay for their work.

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