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Nine club workers defend their employers
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Posted on Apr 25 2006
Nine employees of the Stardust and Star Light night clubs appealed to the Department of Labor yesterday to allow them to continue working with these nightclubs, even as they defended their employers from allegations of employing minors and forcing them to dance naked.
The employees—eight dancers and one bartender—told the Saipan Tribune that their employers, David Atalig and his wife Corazon Atalig, are kind.
They said that the two never forced them to dance naked because before they were hired in the Philippines they had already been told about their job as strip tease dancers on Saipan.
They insisted that they were not coerced into dancing naked. They also said they are not minors.
The workers said they want to go back to work so they could send money to their families and relatives in the Philippines.
Star Lite in Garapan was closed last April 8. Stardust in San Jose, which is reportedly now under new management, was forced to close business last Friday because of lack of dancers.
The nine workers said Labor allowed them to work as waitresses and not as dancers with other employers, but they prefer to work again with the Atalig couple.
The workers showed to the Saipan Tribune their air-conditioned housing located beside the house of the Ataligs on Capitol Hill.
They said there are a total of 21 Filipino employees in the clubs. Seventeen were taken to government’s shelters after authorities conducted their investigation.
The workers said four of them were among those 17 who initially went to the shelters. But recently the four decided to return to their employers.
They said the 13 dancers who remain at separate shelters raised the false allegations against the Ataligs because they want to live with their boyfriends.
Early this month, authorities arrested the Atalig couple for allegedly employing minor girls and forcing them to dance naked and do other lewd acts. Corazon Atalig’s two sisters were also arrested. The defendants denied the charges.
