Legal Topics

Strip Club Dancers Return To Work With Actors’ Equity Representation

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Last September I made a post about strippers working at a club in Los Angeles who were approaching Actors’ Equity Association to help them unionize their workplace. Today I saw on CNN.com that they had indeed held a successful unionization vote under the auspices of Equity last May (NPR story).

While the setting of the strike may add a salacious air to the story, the basic details of the effort are pretty common across all unionization fights. The dancers forming the union were contesting their categorization as contractors rather then employees, seeking better working conditions, and better assurances of their safety and security. There were lock outs, picketing, suits contesting the dancers’ right to form a union.

It appears they don’t have a contract yet, but the dancers returned to work at the end of August in a gesture of mutual trust based on physical improvements that had been made during renovations as well as changes in policy and practice.

Actors’ Equity suggests that the legal rulings that lead to this may set a precedent for other workers in the beauty and entertainment industries to be categorized as employees rather than contractors.

Fewer Non-Profits Engaging In Lobbying Advocacy Than 20 Years Ago

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According to a story on the Associated Press, fewer non-profits are engaging in lobbying efforts than 20 years ago. The Independent Sector had commissioned a study that found less than 1/3 of organizations engaged in lobbying over the last five years versus nearly 3/4  of organizations in 2000. Given that there was a lot of advocacy for Covid funding, these results make me wonder if more people weren’t engaged in lobbying in the last five years and didn’t consider what they were doing to be lobbying or if fewer entities did a lot of the heavy lifting versus twenty years ago.

The survey results do seem to indicate organizations are unaware of lobbying rules or uncomfortable with engaging in lobbying and lack the resources to participate.

And even though nonprofits work on a range of issues that are affected by policy choices, such as funding for the arts and science and policies on hot-button issues like abortion and gun control, less than one-third of nonprofits said they were well-versed in how to legally conduct advocacy campaigns and how much lobbying they were permitted to do. Twenty years ago more than half knew the rules, the survey found.

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Holding nonprofits back, Watkins said, was a lack of money to hire full-time staff with policy expertise and fear that taking part in debates on policy matters or providing voters with nonpartisan voting guides would put their nonprofit status in jeopardy.

Independent Sector plans to conduct studies to dig deeper into the reasons for the decline, but experts said many nonprofits don’t have the money to engage in policy debates. And some organizations may fear taking public stances on issues, given the heated political environment.

Sticking their necks out could make them targets of political opponents, they said.

 

A number of survey responses seemed to indicate people were concerned about running afoul IRS rules that prohibit investing a substantial amount of time and resources into lobbying. Substantial is apparently a much higher bar than people realize, though obviously the term leaves a considerable amount of gray area open to interpretation.

While Gorovitz allowed that the IRS regulations on nonprofit advocacy can be confusing, the guidance provided by the agency, he said, is often misunderstood.

“It does not mean ‘don’t lobby,’” he said. “It means lobby. It’s an express invitation in the tax code that says you can lobby.”

Be Careful Monetizing Those Vacation Videos

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So as you are getting out there traveling to enjoy the natural beauty of the U.S. National Parks this summer, you may want to take a cautionary note from a case Gordon Firemark wrote about in May.  A guy who was filming parts of a feature film was dinged by the Nation Park Service for not securing the proper permits. While the charges against him were dropped, he pressed suit claiming that requiring permits and fees were unconstitutional. The 1st District Court of Appeals held that the fees and permits requirement was constitutional and the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

Firemark notes that this ruling puts some casual recording and photography activities at risk of prosecution if people seek to monetize those materials.

You take your family vacation to Yellowstone, Mt. Rushmore, or Yosemite, and you capture some beautiful video. Then, you post it on Youtube. If you monetize that video, it just became commercial., and you could be fined, penalized, or even jailed for violating the park service’s fee-and-permit regulations. Same could happen if you capture a great still image and decide to offer it for sale via a stock-photo agency?

Do a livestream on your monetized YouTube channel from inside the park? Bingo. You need a filming permit. And that costs.

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There are a few things we as creators can do to address this situation.

Don’t monetize your work. Ever. Period.
Get the permits. (As understand it, the permit Price should’ve obtained would’ve cost $500 if obtained before filming… and there were penalties and interest tacked on later since he didn’t).
Write to your congressional representatives and ask them to address the situation.

Non-Profits Didn’t Volunteer For Mandatory Volunteerism

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It is likely you haven’t been able to avoid the seemingly incessant discussion about the negotiations to raise the debt limit. If you haven’t been able to muster the zen-like state of letting the details of those negotiations pass through one ear and out the other, you may recall that work requirements for those receiving financial aid some some sort has been one of the sticking points.

In a post on the For Purpose Law Group blog, Linda J. Rosenthal writes about how mandatory volunteerism is a bad idea. In her piece, which contains dozens of links to studies and opinion pieces on the topic, she applies this sentiment not only to government mandates, but graduation requirements for students as well.

Of all the pieces to which she links, a statement by the National Council of Non-profits provides the most succinct summation about why this is such a bad policy. (my emphasis)

Mandatory volunteerism is harmful because the policy imposes increased costs, burdens, and liabilities on nonprofits by an influx of coerced individuals. Few if any of the mandatory volunteerism bill sponsors ever ask whether nonprofits in their communities can handle an onslaught of hundreds or thousands of individuals showing up on nonprofit doorsteps for the purpose of doing time rather than doing good.

They go on to say that they oppose any efforts that tie receipt of benefits to a requirement to volunteer because they “impose increased costs, burdens, and liabilities on nonprofits by an influx of coerced individuals.”

A number of the articles linked by Rosenthal also address the oxymoronic nature of “mandatory volunteerism,” especially in the name of trying to engender a sense of civic mindness and charity in students by refusing to let them graduate if they don’t complete their hours.