Monday morning musings for workplace watchers.
Strippers in LA Unite|Sick Leave Stays Local
Robert Iafolla: The union seeking to represent strippers at a Los Angeles club will benefit from a Trump-era NLRB decision holding that exotic dancers at an Ohio club were employees rather than independent contractors.
Star Garden dancers’ right to elect Actors’ Equity Association as their bargaining representative hinges on being deemed employees under federal labor law. The union filed an election petition with the National Labor Relations Board last week.
But Star Garden is likely to oppose unionization by arguing the strippers aren’t employees. The club required at least one of its dancers to sign a “lease agreement” making her a contractor, she told Bloomberg Law in May.
To make its case that the Star Garden strippers are employees, the Actors’ Equity Association can point to the NLRB’s 2020 ruling in Nolan Enterprises Inc. d/b/a Centerfold Club. An all-Republican three-member NLRB panel noted several factors supporting its employee ruling, including that the club exerted significant control over dancers’ opportunities for economic gain.
That decision gives the union a boost in its bid to make Star Garden the first unionized strip club in the US since 1996, when strippers at the now-defunct Lusty Lady Peepshow in San Francisco formed the Exotic Dancers Union.
The NLRB’s 2020 decision would be a “strong” case for the union to cite, said Matthew Bodie, a law professor at the...
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