Photo by Don Treeger / The RepublicanThe Mardi Gras strip club in downtown Springfield is one of five nightclubs that a group of dancers, disc jockeys and bartenders is suing claiming that they were denied standard worker benefits. View the full gallery of all the nightclubs.SPRINGFIELD – A class-action suit filed by exotic dancers over what they say are unfair labor practices at the Mardi Gras and four other area strip clubs parallels a similar suit filed by dancers earlier this year against a club in the city of Chelsea, the lawyer for the Springfield area dancers said Friday. Tod A. Cochran, lawyer with the Boston law firm of Pyle Rome Ehrenberg, went so far as to say the two cases are nearly identical. “They are not different in any important way,” he said. The Chelsea case, filed against King Arthur’s Lounge, involves dancers who said the club classified them as independent contractors, rather than employees, and as such denied them minimum wage and other benefits, charged them a $35 fee per shift and kept $10 of every $30 they received for private dances.
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