There are just some professions we don't normally think of in terms of job classifications.
A circus clown, for instance, or those human statues in the park who cover themselves with silver and stand motionless for hours.
Or strippers.
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And yet, these are all people who have chosen to do a certain thing for money. Now, we know the clown works for the circus, and the human statue, one can assume, is a freelancer.
But how about the stripper? Strippers generally get paid by customers, not the clubs where they "perform." The club is just a place where they can do their thing in public and have bouncers to provide security. Right?
Wrong. As it turns out, at least according to the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York, strippers are employees, not independent contractors.
That's what the court decided in the case of Rick's Cabaret, a club the feds apparently decided to use as a test case. Rick's, and other strip joints, had, for tax and other purposes, classified their exotic dancers as independent contractors. The court was asked to review the working conditions of the dancers and determine whether, in reality, they were employees.
According to the HR news portal TLNT, the court decided Rick's had misclassified the strippers as indies, when in fact they met the test of employees. Here are the factors the court weighed:
Question: To what degree did the club control the dancers?
Answer: To a considerable degree, including work schedules, the dancers' appearance, the length of the dancers' dresses, the types of shoes they could wear, the songs they disrobed to, and how they were to interact with customers while performing on stage.
Question: What was the workers' opportunity for profit and loss?
Answer: The club actually had the greatest opportunity for raking in the dough by selling stuff to the customers as they slipped the dancers dollar bills.
Question: How much skill was required to perform the work?
Answer: Not that much (sorry, ladies).
Question: What was the duration of the working relationship?
Answer: Longer than you might think in many cases.
Question: To what extent was the work is an integral part of the employer's business?
Answer: Are you kidding?
This was a tough call for Rick's and other similar establishments, because doing the paperwork and paying the costs of employees is, as we know, a lot more taxing than doing the same with independent contractors.
And, with strippers, you do need to hire bouncers, too. That's another tricky group to manage.
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Dan Cook
Dan Cook is a journalist and communications consultant based in Portland, OR. During his journalism career he has been a reporter and editor for a variety of media companies, including American Lawyer Media, BusinessWeek, Newhouse Newspapers, Knight-Ridder, Time Inc., and Reuters. He specializes in health care and insurance related coverage for BenefitsPRO.
