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Thread: final outcome of 2009 Sapphire lawsuit: dancers are employees

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    Default final outcome of 2009 Sapphire lawsuit: dancers are employees

    http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/10/31...cmp=latestnews

    Should be interesting. Can't imagine it will lead to lower housefees though.

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    Default Re: final outcome of 2009 Sapphire lawsuit: dancers are employees

    Should be interesting
    ^^^ the truly interesing aspect will be whether or not Nevada's Dep't of Labor, casino unions, Sapphire itself, etc. try to 'run with this' ... i.e. attempting to expand the court ruling into covering every strip club in Vegas / Nevada.


    Can't imagine it will lead to lower housefees though
    The law says that an 'employer' charging 'employees' a fee to work is illegal ... so house fees will have to stop. However, for the club to continue to operate 'in the black', the lost house fee revenues will need to be made up for in other ways. The most likely method of doing this would be the club 'keeping' a higher percentage of dancers' private dance / VIP / CR money.

    Other changes are also likely, given that legally treating dancers as 'employees' brings lots of potential new cost factors into play on the part of the 'employer' club. Among these are mandatory benefits for 'full time' employee dancers i.e. unemployment insurance premiums, worker's comp premiums, health insurance premiums or new ACA 'employer' tax penalties, etc. The only legal way for an 'employer' club to avoid having to pay these new costs is to strictly limit each dancer's total weekly working hours to 28 hours - so that the 'employee' dancers are legally considered to be part time employees thus ineligible for these benefits.

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    Default Re: final outcome of 2009 Sapphire lawsuit: dancers are employees

    ^^ With the fact that dancers in Vegas are a dime a dozen, I'm thinking that will happen. They will probably just hire a multitude of girls and limit everyone to 28 hours. Is that legal though, or do you have to have some full time 'employees'?
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    Default Re: final outcome of 2009 Sapphire lawsuit: dancers are employees

    ^^^ no, an 'employer' can structure ALL non-management 'employees' as part time if they so choose.

    However, even if those part time employees aren't eligible for benefits, each additional part time employee does involve more costs to the employer ... payroll processing, tax withholding etc. ... on top of the minimum wage payouts. Thus, unlike the 'good ol days' of the club being able to charge each dancer a house fee, it now serves the club's interest to have as few 'employee' dancers per shift as possible.

    And, as employees, DOL policies regarding 'fair treatment' etc. come into play ... which could involve problems if one dancer is allowed to work Friday and Saturday nights while another dancer is only allowed to work weekdays. Similarly, as employees, once a dancer is hired the club may run afoul of the DOL if it subsequently fires that dancer without a documented reason. So I can see this club setting a limited number of employee dancers on each shift, and starting to enforce strict shift scheduling, to make sure that no dancer actually works enough hours to trigger eligibility for benefits, to also make sure that the club's total hourly minimum wage payouts are as low as possible, and to minimize the probability of future employee dancer complaints to the DOL.

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