Labor strife in Pensacola Club

I doubt they have much of a case against the club.

I used to work as an "independent contractor" selling and installing alarm systems. We had 3 hour appointment windows, say 3-6 pm. If you got there at 3 and customer wasn't home, they'd force you to wait until 6 or even later, without any compensation while you sat in your car for 3 hours (burning your own gas so you don't freeze to death). If the customer never showed up, you got paid nothing, in fact you "took a hit" which lowers your ranking, meaning you get assigned shittier jobs for a period of time. If your installation was delayed for hours due to no fault of your own (cellular network issues, faulty equipment supplied by the company, you're half-way through a job and customer has to suddenly leave for an hour so you go back and wait in the car, etc. etc.) you got nothing for the extra time you spent. If the customer declined to purchase additional equipment or a higher service level beyond what was previously sold to them over the phone, you got paid 50 bucks for work that would take anywhere from 3 - 8 hours. If a piece of equipment failed within 90 days of installation (most of it was used "refurbished" equipment) then the original installer had to travel to the customer's home and replace it. You got paid nothing for that. I could go on and on.

Everything about this company was fugazi. As a result they had enormous turnover and endless Fair Labor lawsuits brought by former workers. They never paid out on a single one and never changed their business practices.

When you're categorized as an "independent contractor" an unscrupulous company can make an end run around the Fair Labor Standards Act and there's not much you can do about it except quit and move on with your life.

@heaving
Yeah, possibly. The rest of the story is that the founder of the company started the business 20 years ago working out of his living room. Earlier this year he sold the company to ADT for $381 million. Now I'm not saying the guy wasn't smart or didn't work hard for what he achieved, but a big part of his success was based on fucking over both customers and employees. If it's true that the dam is cracking a bit, maybe that's why he sold it rather than deal with having to change the business model. Dude is barely over 50 y.o.

I was part of an organization [ result of a merger ] that stunned its very long term employees by shifting them to independent contractor status! Anger and betrayal were the predominant emotions.

These IC dancer lawsuits have been going on for a couple of years and plenty of clubs have gotten sued and seems to me most times the plaintiffs/dancers have won (but not sure about that) - it's mostly a money-grab by lawyers that saw an opening and dancers - originally the dancers suing were the ones out of the biz already and were looking for one last payday - IDK if the results of these lawsuits have worked to better the dancer profession or not

I would be curious to see her income tax filings, if she didn't declare 100% of her earnings than zero credibility to her argument. I suspect that income tax reporting (meaning lack of true reporting if at all) is a huge advantage of being an IC.

There’s one unscrupulous law firm has paid money to advertise on social media that they are suing this club and that club. I think all they do is file a little bit of paperwork that goes nowhere. I suspect they are just trying to promote themselves in the hope of getting more dancers on board and hope for another payday like whatever happened in California.

Time will tell if this goes anywhere. I doubt it will happen. But one day there’s a good chance there will be enough national traction to make this a thing everywhere.

The best way to avoid lawsuits is to be broke, if the club looks prosperous there's always some lawyer trying to get an angle.

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I am surprised Portland clubs have not been sued the shit out of. This is the only place I have ever danced where they enforce schedules AND make you prepay a house fee.

Most places I have worked, you pay a house fee at the end or middle of your shift. Some places make you prepay a house fee upon entry, but there is no schedule. One place I worked you could either work an enforced schedule and pay zero house fee OR prepay house but can drop in as you feel like it.