Rick’s Cabaret on 33rd Street is claiming two of its former dancers lack the "moral character" to head a $5 million-plus class-action lawsuit against the nudie bar. More than 200 strippers say that Rick’s short-changed them while they worked there and are demanding it pay up. Now the club is launching its own attack on the two women who represent the pole-dancing army.
Sabrina Hart and Reka Furedi claim that though the jiggle joint charged each patron $24 for a "dance dollar," workers only got $18 at the end of the night. Rick’s also allegedly made the dancers pay for use of its poles and stages, causing them to net less than minimum wage for their exotic work. "Rick's has it backwards," pronounced the December press release for the lawsuit. "Strippers are not supposed to have to pay to work. They may agree to strip off their clothes, but they have not agreed to be stripped of their rights."
Now the cabaret says that because of alleged "misrepresentations and inconsistencies" Hart and Furedi are unfit to represent the other women. One piece of evidence came from Hart’s own husband, who admitted she slipped him her digits after they met at Rick’s, even though club rules forbade it. But the lawyer representing the slighted strippers says the girls have a strong case. He told the NY Post the argument was "evidence of the defendant's desperation in the face of overwhelming case law holding that their practices are unlawful." Rick's is just lucky no one got hurt.
