Ramirez said she sometimes worries about safety. “There are times when the guys are drinking and they start to fight and throw bottles,” she said, but adds that the club where she works hires bouncers.
The need for security was highlighted in December when 24-year-old Adriana Valderrama, a dancer at the nearby Tulcingo Cafe, was fatally shot and her dance partner wounded. There have been no arrests in the killing, and detectives believe the gunman fled to Mexico. Messages left for the bar’s owners were not returned.
Dancers can also face the relatively ordinary peril of labor exploitation.
A lawsuit against the Flamingo, a tropical-themed nightclub in Queens, alleges that the bar’s owners failed to pay wages and overtime, subjected the dancers to video surveillance in a dressing room, and required them to pay entry fees of up to US$11, plus fines if they were late for work or missed a day.
Diana Trejos, a former dancer who is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, complained that the women were controlled as if they were employees: They were given schedules, required to have doctors’ notes if they missed work because of illness and required they buy uniforms for theme nights.
“All of these things were controlled,” said Trejos, 40, who is from Colombia.
Attorneys for the owners of the business asked a court to dismiss the complaint, arguing that nothing in the suit was true.
The dancers and their lawyers disagree.
“You can’t call a worker an independent contractor and avoid the requirements under the labor law,” said Elizabeth Wagoner, an attorney for a community organization that is supporting the former Flamingo workers in their lawsuit and has organized protests against the nightclub.
Gary Kushner, an attorney for the Flamingo’s owners, said he asked his clients not to comment. He said they had promised the federal judge they wouldn’t litigate through the media.
Handwritten posters in the window of Flamingo apparently put up by current dancers at the club disputed the former employees’ claims: “We are happy to work in the paradise of Flamingo,” and “They’re against us because they’re not here.”
RSS