Is a 'stripper' an 'employee' or an 'independent contractor'?

Here’s a topic we consider in Week 2 of my Employment Law course week.   Is a worker an ’employee’ or an ‘independent contractor’?  The answer matters significantly in employment law, because only employees are entitled to the protection of employment laws like employment standards legislation, pay equity protections, workers’ compensation, and human rights laws governing the employment relationship.
But determining whether someone is an employee or not is not always a straightforward exercise.  I argued a case years ago when I represented a taxi driver who had his throat slit by a passenger and was denied workers’ compensation benefits on the basis that he was an ‘independent contractor’ and not an employee of Blue Line Taxi in Ottawa.  We won that case.  The Tribunal ruled that the taxi driver was sufficiently controlled by Blue Line and integrated into Blue Line’s business to make him an employee, even though he owned his car and taxi license, and he set his own hours of work and was not paid a wage by Blue Line.  Since he was an employee, he was entitled to workers’ compensation benefits.
Here’s a story from the U.S. about a case in which strippers were ruled to be employees of the club where they danced. The nightclub in Washington took the position that strippers are self-employed entertainers and not its employees, and therefore were not entitled to the statutory minimum wage applicable to employees.  The Court disagreed, finding that the dancers were closer to employees than independent businesspeople. I suspect most exotic dancers in Canada are in a similar situation, but you would need to look at the particular arrangements in each case.
Here is the decision, if you are interested in reading about the employment life of a stripper.