Four NFL Teams Sued By Cheerleaders For Wage Theft
An apparent new trend in the labor law world involves cases brought against National Football League teams. However, football players are not filing the cases; instead, cheerleaders are filing suit and claiming they are routinely underpaid.
Just last week the New York Jets became the fourth NFL team to be sued by former cheerleaders who say the team engaged in wage theft and broke other state and federal labor laws. The Oakland Raiders, the Cincinnati Bengals and the Buffalo Bills have also been sued by former cheerleaders over the past few months.
In the case of the Jets, a former cheerleader, Krystal C., says that she spent one year working for the team and is now suing to receive back pay on behalf of herself and her entire squad. Krystal C. alleges that she and her teammates were paid a flat $150 per game fee; however, they were never compensated for practice time, travel time or other work conducted outside of the actual game.
Her attorney says that when you divide the $150 fee by the hours worked, Krystal and her teammates only earned around $3.77 per hour, well below New York’s $8.75 minimum wage. The problem of NFL teams underpaying women who work long hours as cheerleaders in such a physically demanding job needs to stop and the recent lawsuits are aimed at sending a clear message to other teams to change their ways.
Krystal says that she felt like she could bring her case after seeing other women stand up and file suit against the other teams. According to Krystal, it was common for cheerleaders to complain about their lack of pay, but team officials did little if anything to remedy the serious problem.
When five former cheerleaders against the Buffalo Bills brought a wage theft case last month it received national attention because the team decided to suspend its cheering squad for the upcoming season until the case has been fully dealt with. That case alleges that the cheerleaders, known as the Buffalo Jills, were required to work around 840 hours per year unpaid. Additionally, the women complained about a hostile work environment that required them to pass embarrassing body fat inspections known as “jiggle tests.”
Similar suits brought by Oakland Raiders cheerleaders found that their hourly pay worked out to be under $5 per hour while those who cheered for the Cincinnati Bengals made only $2.85 per hour, well below the state’s minimum wage. Given the apparent pervasive nature of labor law violations, some cheerleaders have even discussed the idea of forming a national cheer association to protect cheerleaders in much the same way that the professional football players’ union works on their behalf.
Source: “New York Jets Cheerleaders Sue Over Labor Law Violations,” by Victoria Cavaliere, published at FirstToKnow.com on May 7, 2014.
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