Before the San Diego Chargers regular season begins on Sunday, state Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez is asking the team to pay its cheerleaders at least minimum wage.
Currently, the team's Charger Girls are treated as independent contractors and paid $75 a game, Gonzalez said. Cheerleaders are not paid for their time spent practicing or appearing at promotional events. Gonalez wrote a bill to require all professional sports teams to pay cheerleaders as employees and give them sick leave and reimburse them for expenses. Her bill passed and goes into effect Jan. 1, which is also when the state's minimum wage will rise to $10 an hour.
The Chargers regular season includes one game after January 1, so it could wait until then to begin paying its cheerleaders by the hour. Gonzalez said the Chargers and all NFL teams shouldn't wait to do what's right.
"It's a simple thing, it doesn't cost a lot of money for these billion dollar owners to treat women with the same dignity and respect that you'd treat the guy selling you beer," she said.
A spokesman for the Chargers passed a question of whether the team would pay its cheerleaders at the start of the season to a third party contractor, the event planning company E2K.
Erin Olmstead, E2K's president, did not return multiple calls and emails.
Gonzalez said both the Chargers and the San Francisco 49ers use third party contractors.
"When this bill came up, they said they felt it wasn't their responsibility," she said. "It clearly is, in the bill and in California law, we have subcontractor liability. So they know now."
New York Assemblywoman Nily Rozic said Gonzalez's law inspired her to introduce similar legislation.
Gonzalez said California and New York's legislation, along with lawsuits from cheerleaders against their teams for wage theft in several states, should have spurred the NFL to make a new policy for all its teams requiring them to pay cheerleaders minimum wage.
"They should, with their record on women lately, want to get out in front of this and demand that their teams treat women with just a little bit of respect," she said. "We would never tolerate shortchanging women at any other workplace. And an NFL game should be no different."
