The War on Porn Regular Updates about the Assault on The Adult Industry
Related Articles
Sometimes a ruling hits the news and you can almost feel the collective exhale from people who’ve been waiting far too long to be treated like… well, workers. That’s what happened in Denver, where a district judge decided that strip club entertainers — dancers, performers, the people who carry the whole night on their shoulders — are employees. Real employees. Which means they’re covered by the city’s labor protections and the standard minimum hourly wage that everyone else in the consolidated city and county is supposed to receive.
The decision backs up what a Denver Auditor’s Office hearing officer had already determined while digging into wage theft claims at several strip clubs around town — including big names like the local Rick’s Cabaret branch, PT’s Showclub, PT’s Showclub Centerfold and the Diamond Cabaret. You know the places: neon lights, velvet corners, the kind of spots that thrive on performance yet somehow never wanted to acknowledge the performers as actual staff.
Attorneys for the clubs kept insisting that entertainers were exempt from Denver’s employment-law umbrella, as if the entire job existed in some hazy loophole. But the ruling cut through that fog. It confirmed what the Auditor’s Office has been saying for years: strippers and erotic performers deserve the same wage protections as anyone else clocking in across the city.
“Our office enforces wage theft laws for all industries and protects anyone performing work in Denver. Adult entertainment workers are no different, and we are pleased the courts agree,” said Timothy M. O’Brien, the elected city auditor who oversees Denver Labor. And honestly, hearing that felt like a long-overdue moment of someone naming the obvious.
Denver Labor, by the way, does its job through law enforcement, education and certified audits — the kind of behind-the-scenes work most people don’t think about until it hits the headlines or their paycheck.
“Entertainers are workers and, therefore, are entitled to the fundamental protections of Denver’s wage ordinances,” reads an informational page on O’Brien
