From today's NY Times: Not a "strip" club in the traditional sense, but some familiar complaints. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/10/ny...l?ref=nyregion
Several former Flamingo dancers plan to file a federal lawsuit against the club on Thursday, asserting that it repeatedly violated federal and state wage laws and cheated its dancers of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In interviews in Spanish, several former dancers said the owners often made them pay a $60 or $70 fine when they missed a day of work. Several complained of having to pay an $11 fee each day just to enter the club and an additional $10 if they arrived a half-hour late.
They said that sometimes, after dancing from 4 p.m. to 4 a.m., they had to attend meetings that lasted until 6 a.m. in which the owners held forth, calling some dancers “puta” (whore) as well as ugly and fat. The dancers’ most serious complaint was that the club never paid them a cent for their 45-hour workweeks.
The lawsuit raises an intriguing question of law: whether the for-hire dancers were employees, who should have been paid wages for every hour they worked, or independent contractors who, as the Flamingo’s owners assert, were merely renting space on the dance floor.
The owners say they had no obligation to pay wages, asserting that the dancers were entrepreneurs who made a living by keeping the $2 they earned for each dance...
...If the dancers win their lawsuit, it could have ripple effects at the city’s many for-hire dance clubs, latter-day versions of Depression-era joints where men paid 10 cents for a dance.
“We are alleging that the dancers were never paid minimum wage, never paid overtime, and there were illegal deductions and kickbacks in the form of entry fees, late fees and sick fees,” said Elizabeth Wagoner, another lawyer for Make the Road.
The lawsuit is alleging wage violations on behalf of more than 2,000 dancers, waiters and bartenders who the lawyers say worked at Flamingo over the past three years.



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