A lapdancer earning an estimated £200,000 a year has started a landmark legal attempt to sue famous strip club Stringfellows for unfair dismissal.
Nadine Quashie, 28, who took home up to £1,265 on busy nights performing fully clothed, topless and wearing only a G-string, claims she was wrongfully sacked for gross misconduct by Stringfellows in December 2008.
The single mother, from Greenford, west London, told the central London employment tribunal up to 25 per cent of money was removed in commission from dancers after a night's work at Stringfellows - with a further £65 'house fee' and £15 'tip out' fee deducted.
Her work - in which her garter was stuffed by clients with pre-paid vouchers called 'heavenly money' - involved having to work a minimum of three shifts a week, she said.
She was forced to perform free for customers 'on the hour, every hour', every time the song Girls, Girls, Girls came on, she told the tribunal.
If dancers were found in the changing room during this time they were fined £50, she said.
Stringfellows did not allow her to work for other clubs, she said, dictated to her how much she could charge and prevented her from providing a substitute.
She added that she was threatened with fines or suspension if she did not attend meetings at Stringfellows in spite of child care difficulties.
Nadine Quashie worked for the company earning an estimated £200,000-a-year
'We had to wear garters and keep the heavenly money in them. If we were caught with cash it would be confiscated,' she told the tribunal.
'One dancer was caught without a garter and was suspended and told not to come back until she had one,' she said.
Caspar Glyn, for Stringfellows, told the tribunal that Ms Quashie's case was 'constructed on lots of little lies'.
He said she was working in a club where the rewards were 'enormous' and it was her choice to work for Stringfellows.
'You were working in the best gentlemen's club and the most lucrative gentlemen's club in London because of the standard of clientele it attracts,' he said.
He said it was a 'complete lie' that she was forced at any stage to dance naked for clients.
Ms Quashie is attempting to prove that she was an employee of Stringfellows to bring an unfair dismissal case.
She claimed she was unaware of her self-employed status when she began work for Stringfellows in June 2007.
She denies having signed a contract pointing out this status when she began working for Stringfellows, named after owner Peter Stringfellow.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...dismissal.html



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