Workplace Movie Hall of Fame: America’s Sweethearts

Workplace Movie Hall of Fame: America’s Sweethearts

Hosts: Steve Boese & Trish Steed

Today, Steve and Trish discuss the Netflix documentary “America’s Sweethearts: The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders,” which explores the high-pressure, low-compensation world of professional cheerleading.

The documentary reveals the rigorous recruitment process, where cheerleaders must reapply annually and face stringent criteria, including dance technique, showmanship, and personal appearance. The conversation underscores the need for better compensation, work-life balance, and safety measures in such high-performance environments.

Thank you for your continued support of the show and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts!

This episode of At Work in America is sponsored by Paychex. Join Beaumont Vance, Paychex senior vice president of data, analytics, and AI, in an exclusive on-demand webinar, to discover how leaders are using AI to streamline HR tasks and supercharge efficiencies. You’ll learn how to automate those tedious tasks and free up your time for what really matters — your people. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from an industry leader. Visit paychex.com/awia.

Transcript follows:

Announcer 0:00
Welcome to At Work in America, sponsored by Paychex. At Work in America digs in behind the headlines and trends to the stories of real people making a difference in the world of work. And now here are your hosts, Steve Boese and Trish Steed.

Steve 0:28
Welcome to the At Work in America podcast. My name is Steve Boese. I’m with Trish Steed. Trish, what’s happening?

Trish 0:34
I am just trying to get through the week. How about you?

Steve 0:40
I think the same. We’re recording this midweek as we speak. I’m not sure exactly when it’s running, but yeah, so we’re just right smack dab in the middle of working. I would say this. I thought this this morning, summertime, August, which it still is supposed to be a little slower, supposed to be calm. And I feel like we’re going full bore these last couple of weeks, especially. Had a little bit of downtime in July, but August has been crazy.

Trish 1:09
I agree, but it’s good crazy, right? Like we love when we’re having more to do. But, yeah, I was hoping I am going to take, I will say I’m taking Friday off. I’m gonna do my first summer Friday this summer. Good. I know it’s almost over. No, I am gonna go see my son. University of Utah just started up this past Monday, so I’m gonna go out there for the weekend and just make sure he’s all settled in for his junior year of college. So, yeah.

Steve 1:39
This is maybe a topic for you know, our old work break shows that we used to do, but I was reading something over the weekend which reminded me of something you just said, which was, I’ve seen this new kind of helicopter parenting thing, where some parents are moving their children into, say, like the freshman dorm kind of situation, the classic dorm with two roommates, one, you know, single bed on either side of the room, but they’re arriving to the to the move in, and the the other roommates not there yet, and maybe he’s not coming for a day or two. And the parents, I’ve only seen this with moms, so it’s probably maybe more of a mom thing. The moms are staying over the night. No, in the dorm room with their freshman child, Trish, in the in the college dorm room as after they’ve moved him in, is that sort of insane? I think I got dropped off at college and kicked on the way out the car, you know, when I got taken to college?

Trish 2:39
I think it was like, here’s a here’s a 50 or something, and we’ll see you in three months, four months. Now, you know what? That’s interesting, because I have not heard that specific story, but what I will say is that I have one student at University of Nebraska, one at University of Utah, so I’m on both of, like, the parents boards, you know, for out of state kids are adults, right? And it’s funny, because you can always see, like, the first month or two is just bombarded with all of the new freshmen parents joining in. And they’re like, oh my gosh, I need to do this, this and this for my kid. I need to make sure that every single thing is perfect for little junior or whatever. And I just want to be the meanest person ever and be like, stop it. Go home and stop it. Cry your eyes out, if you need to, but stop it, like they’re trying to navigate. Like the most recent one, I had to mute it. It was like, my son’s Ra is not, you know, around enough and checking on him enough, and we’ve been moved in now for a whole day, and then it was like, what activities does the school have planned for us as a family to go through? It’s like, no, your now young adult is going to college. Let them go. Yeah? Like, yeah, here’s some cash. Goodbye.

Steve 3:59
Yeah, it’s something we could we could go on about that for ages, but good. Well, that sounds good. Take a little bit of a break. I’m excited Trish for today’s show, of course, and by the way, we’ve been killing it lately, the last couple of shows that we’ve recorded and posted with the Volunteers of America Colorado, talking about servant faith based leadership. Servant leadership was fantastic. And the show we just did with Rett and Austin from Sholder, it’s a new and innovative kind of approach to mental health, and can be offered as an employer sponsored benefit as well. And just fascinating conversation with Rett and Austin.

Steve 4:39
And I encourage folks to check it out. And to me, these last couple shows, especially Trish, like exactly what we wanted to have happen right when we rebranded or relaunched this show or launched this this at work in America show a few years ago. So I do encourage folks to check those out. I’m wearing the Paychex hat today. Trish. If you’re watching this on YouTube, you can. See that. Let’s thank our friends at Paychex, they are one of the leading providers of HR Payroll, retirement and insurance solutions for businesses of all sizes. If you ever felt like you’re drowning in paperwork or repetitive tasks, you probably like all your HR colleagues and but there’s time Trish to kind of move ahead and change your game using AI, of course, and Paychex has offered this great webinar featuring Beaumont Vance, who’s Paychex Senior Vice President of data analytics, and AI to help you discover how leaders are using AI to help streamline HR tasks and supercharge their efficiencies. So you can watch this on demand webinar, Trish, go to Paychex.com/awia to watch the webinar today and learn how to help transform your HR processes powered by AI. And thanks to our friends at Paychex, of course, for all their support. Absolutely alright. Trish, enough with the beginning. Let’s get to the show we’re doing, like a modified version of workplace Hall of Fame. Today we are. It’s kind of workplace Netflix documentary Hall of Fame. I guess.

Trish 4:39
I think that’s fair. I think doing it on a whole show and sort of like lumping it in instead of a movie. It’s more hours that we put into this one, but it was very workplace related. Let’s just say that.

Steve 6:22
Today we are talking about the Netflix documentary called America’s Sweethearts, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. It’s a seven part documentary on Netflix chronicling essentially a season, right, a football season, a season in the life of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders organization. It’s management, it’s team members, it’s, it’s comings and it’s, it’s comings and goings and trials and tribulations. And I must tell you, at the beginning of this, I was like, I do not care about this. And the only reason I was interested in it is because I had famously read over the years, Tricia, maybe you had as well of professional sports teams, football teams, but other sports teams as well, famously underpaying their cheerleaders to the point where they barely make any money at all, or very, very low salaries. And so I knew there was a workplace angle even coming into this before I began to watch the series Trish. What did you know about the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders and anything about this story before you started watching the documentary?

Trish 7:32
Very little so and honestly, when that first came out on Netflix, because it’s been out a few months, I had no interest in watching this. Because I don’t, it just doesn’t. It just didn’t sound appealing to me. But the more you and I talked about, kind of the workplace implications it, it seemed interesting, and I’m glad we watched it, they’ve had another show that’s been on even before this one, for many years, kind of chronicling the same things where you’re going through, mainly the tryout process. This is a 10 week boot camp, if you will, training boot camp that these potential cheerleaders go through. So I absolutely wanted to learn more about, you know, just what they do go through, right? Because it’s an actual it’s not just like, show up, try out, and, oh, you’ve made it. This is like, a really dedicated group of women athletes, because, again, it’s not just doing dance, right? A good dancer won’t get you in. You have to have more than that, so. But other than that, I think just growing up, you know, I had obviously heard of the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders. They back when I was young, they were just kind of starting into calendars and posters, right? So boys at school would, of course, have some of those things, or be talking about those things. But, yeah, I mean, I think as a young girl, I thought, wow, that would be really glamorous to look like these women and, you know, be a cheerleader that, of course, it’s like being a like. I also wanted to be a princess, right? So I don’t know, to me, it was a little bit unrealistic.

Steve 9:03
And this documentary, Trish is essentially the entire documentary, is really the workplace or right? And if there are some divergences throughout the seven episodes, where we get into some of the folks that cheerleaders and some of the management’s kind of personal lives, a little bit, but it’s mostly about the job, right? The organization, the process, the job, the people doing the job. And 95% of probably the documentary is filmed inside, quote, unquote, a workplace, right? The locker room, the practice facilities, the stadium for the games. So I think maybe we’ll start Trish with the how the documentary sort of starts, right, and what you alluded to was like the recruitment process, how it works, and what kind of lessons were just, boy, that’s interesting, like takeaways that to the broader workplace, even that that you pulled out, or did you pull out any from that process of actually selecting the team?

Trish 10:00
Yeah, you know, just to start off, I think I’ll say it’s, there are a lot of positives for these women as they go through some of the things I wrote down was, you know, it’s almost a sisterhood. They all have similar goals in terms of their passion for dance or performing or, you know, for being athletes. Many are athletes in their own right and other sports as well, so they kind of bring that attitude. I thought that was really a positive thing about who comes to these tryouts. But really, I mean, just from a pure audition standpoint, it seemed to me, right or wrong that they get so many, you know, hundreds or even 1000s of women each year who are interested that by the point we’re seeing the girls coming in, they’ve already been through several layers of kind of whittling through that, right? They submit online auditions and so forth. So by the time you’re actually invited to come in person, you’ve been vetted by a number of people, which is a little bit different, I think, than than I thought it was. That in that regard, it was a little more like a regular job interview could be, for example, using maybe, you know, a submitted video or video interviewing software, and then kind of, then determining right who comes into your workplace to actually perform an interview? Yeah, I don’t know what were you thinking as you were watching that initial part of the process.

Steve 11:28
It was similar enough to other types of recruitment that we see right with the sort of online submissions and the vetting, and like any other hyper competitive kinds of positions that that are out there, there’s a lot of applicants for very few roles. I think the one or two things that really stand out to me, unlike sort of, quote, unquote, normal jobs, right? And in this job, everyone has to reapply for their position every year, in terms of the actual cheerleaders themselves, right? So we learned in the documentary, they select 36 cheerleaders for the final team. If any of those 36 cheerleaders want to be on the team again the following season, they must start the audition process all over again and re audition, essentially reapply for their job in order to try to keep it now. Certainly, people who returning to the team do have some advantages over the new entrance to the team, to the new rookies. They’ve got certainly more experience. They’ve built up some, you know, connections with the leadership. They just know what to expect, so they’re not surprised by anything in the process, etc, etc. So they do have some advantages when it comes term, you know, comes to reapplying and completing the process. But that is unusual Trish, because, I mean, maybe it’s a more of a sports thing or a performing arts thing in most of our normal jobs that we’ve had in our lives, we’re not always having to reapply for our jobs, right?

Trish 12:54
That would be really stressful.

Steve 12:56
Having to prove that you should still be working there now, certainly, you know, performance oriented kind of cultures, you’re having to prove yourself fairly regularly, but the formal reapplication process for your job is quite unusual, and I thought a little a touch surprising, especially for you know, folks who’d been on the team, you know, three, four and maybe even five years, that they’d have to start all over from scratch, right again, with some of that personal kind of, you know, personal connections, etc, and expertise built up, but still. But that was a little bit unusual.

Trish 13:32
I think I was in my mind trying to compare it to other seasonal types of work. Because this really is, you know, we think about it like, Oh, they’re maybe not paid enough, for example, and I was absolutely in that camp. I might still be a tiny bit in there, but when you really think about this, is not a 365 days a year job. This is something that is considered seasonal. So in that regard, if you were applying for maybe to be Christmas help or something like that, right during a holiday season, you might then, if you wanted to work at that store the next year, you would probably have to reapply, I would imagine now, again, like you said, you might have some advantages. You might know the leaders, you might have some other experiences that help you get those jobs. But I think each year I did go back and watch some of the older episodes from years prior, and it doesn’t seem to have changed very much. But like you said, they they take about 36 there have been years they’ve taken 38 they like 36 I would say, you know, you can only be a cheerleader for five years maximum with them. It’s not based on your age, it’s based on number of years you’re with them. So every year, you can imagine there are five year veterans that are then no longer eligible to come back. Most people tend to come back, but even if they lose a few others, you’re looking at probably adding 10 ish new girls to the team roughly every year. I think that can change a little bit, but yeah, so I would say a. About, you know, 25-26 women are coming back to retry out for their jobs.

Steve 15:06
Yeah, and it makes some sense for the nature of this is the performing arts. It’s a combination of performing arts and athletics and some other things that really make up the fundamental requirements of the job. So having to prove, at least physically, that you’re still up to the challenge, right? Of doing the job, whether it’s and we can talk about injuries in a little bit, but whether it’s injuries or you just you don’t keep yourself in shape in the off season. That happens a lot in sports, right? Like, it’s a very physical job and requires a lot of dedication in the off season as well, I’d imagine, to stay on top of your game, but the fact that they don’t seem to really give too much benefit of the doubt to the returning cheerleaders. I thought was interesting. And I guess the last thing I’ll say about the recruitment process, and touch of a spoiler alert, maybe for folks who are going to start to watch this, the first couple of episodes of the of the seven part documentary are really about the tryouts and then the training camp and the process to whittle down some really, really big number at the beginning down to the 36 at the end, and one of the final two women who were released from the team Trish is released for a incredibly stupid and frustrating reason. I don’t know how much you remember this part of it, she’s essentially released for the team because at the very last minute, the powers that be decide she’s not tall enough, right? And there was no other real reason given why she was one who did not make it at the end.

Steve 16:38
And they even have a conversation where one of the team owners and the woman who runs the team, whose name is Kelly, who’s the director of the of the cheerleading organization, there, yeah, debate whether or not they should put a minimum height requirement in the application process, which apparently they never had. And I felt really angry for this person at the end who was getting cut from the team simply because they she there was nothing she could do, right? You Your height is your height. And she was in the meeting room where she was being released, begging for her spot on the team, or begging for another chance, really, to prove she should be on the team. And they were like, well, there’s really nothing you can do without telling her, without telling her, well, we decided you’re too short, right, which would have been an awful thing to say, and I felt really bad, because it gets to me if things like hiring process and job offer process when you’re sort of inventing reasons not to hire somebody that were never documented or articulated, and how unfair that can be. And it really was kind of unfair.

Trish 17:44
I agree. But I also just would say that the thing about not being tall enough is your legs are often then not long enough to make it. They have to make it 10 yards in four steps and land right on the line every time of that next yard line. And what they were finding with her, she looked good, but she was not able to land her foot like on that 20 yard line, on that 30 yard line in four steps. And so when you put her in a line with all of the other girls that can she always looked like a little half step off, and it ruined the formation. So I guess I do understand that they probably shouldn’t have phrased it as it’s a height requirement. The requirement should be, you have to be able to get from the 10 yard line to the 20 yard line or so forth in four steps and have your toes past the next yard line. Because that was really what it came down to with her. She couldn’t do it, and she was struggling, right? She was like running to it, basically, to try and get her foot solidly on that next hash line. So I don’t know, I you know what? I did look it up, because it’s been a long time since I was in sort of day to day HR. I was thinking like, has anything changed? First of all, appearance in general, because they’re very much judged on their appearance throughout this entire process, I looked up what the requirements actually say on their website when you apply. It says you should look well proportioned in dancewear. So there is no height requirement per se. There’s no, yeah, no weight requirement. There’s actually not an age requirement as a maximum. There is as a minimum. You have to be 18 at the time doing this.

Steve 19:34
There’s a lot of hours, a lot of work at night, etc, but, right?

Trish 19:38
This has come up not just through them, but through other, you know, other cheerleading jobs or dancer jobs, it is not a protected class. Your appearance is not a protected class unless it is something that is, you know, an ethnicity, gender, something like that, right? So these things as. Horrible as it seems, in this day and age, there’s just they’re not protected.

Steve 20:04
Sadly, a lesson I’ve learned multiple times in my career. You know, it’s held you back. It has. I was just not pretty enough to get some of the jobs I wanted over the years. But, yeah.

Trish 20:16
I tell you, though I’d love to hear your reaction, because I don’t know if you actually did. You look up all the criteria they are actually judged on during those because we’re talking about recruitment during those first few weeks.

Steve 20:25
Just No, I didn’t all I really took from it is what I saw in the documentary.

Trish 20:30
Okay, I’m just gonna for anybody who either has or hasn’t watched it. Just quick little bullet point list. So first and foremost is your dance technique. We saw a lot of that. They focus on that highly high kicks. You have to be able to make the high kicks, which, again, that goes back to height. If you are not able to stand arm in arm, think of like if you haven’t seen the show, like the rockets, do. You have to be able to high kick to where it looks uniform with the other dancers. You have to be able to land in the splits, which I would love for you to talk about in a minute, because you mentioned injuries. That’s going to come up. Showmanship makes sense personal appearance. So again, it doesn’t say anything specific, other than you must look well proportioned in your dancewear. Um, which leaves a lot of interpretation your energy, your enthusiasm, your poise, poise. I thought was interesting, because you have to be able to do appearances with the public. You have to be interviewed. So I was a little bit surprised that was in there. Hadn’t thought about that your figure, which interested that out separate from your physical appearance. I don’t know why that’s a separate thing.

Steve 21:36
Your figure, okay, that feels like a relic from, like the 70s, a little even that expression.

Trish 21:43
I would love to know why they singled that out. And your personality is the last item. Now, I don’t know if those are in order of importance. I sort of think when you write things down, you tend to write them in order of importance. Yeah, so personality. But again, personality, to me, would be a little bit, maybe showmanship, I don’t know.

Steve 22:01
Yeah, it could be. I mean, it is a performing art as well as kind of an athletic endeavor. It’s kind of, you know, it falls. And I don’t want to get into a debate about what cheerleading Is it a sport or not a sport? I don’t think it even matters, right? It’s athletic. Yes, certainly, for the purposes of this discussion, I do seem like, though it has enough that the recruitment process itself is similar enough to some of the difficulties people find with recruitment processes were really lots of jobs today, right? It’s lots of competition, somewhat a very long list of requirements, some of which feel a little nebulous and almost arbitrary, and ultimately making decisions about who gets hired at the end, at least somewhat based on the hiring manager’s gut feelings and subjective evaluations of things like showmanship or, you know, personality, right?

Trish 22:58
In our jobs, yeah, we sort of look at people. How do you carry yourself, right? Like, if you’re hiring someone in a sales job, are they confident? Do they carry themselves with confidence? You know that that might be some of that showmanship of that sort of a job, but if you’re in retail, maybe you have to be friendly and outgoing, and you know, those sorts of things. So we do actually, we probably word them a little differently, but we do have many of these in really every job that we’re interviewing for similar to this. I think it’s just again when it starts getting into things that feel like very subjective around someone’s weight or their physical body appearance, you know, if they’re still able to do all the high kicks and the showmanship and the poise and all the things, it felt a little ugly to me that they were cutting some of these women.

Steve 23:51
For sure. And again, just a reminder to folks both who are looking for work or have been looking for work, or, you know, I heard a lot of tales lately about the job market. It’s been really particularly tough in a lot of especially more in the professional roles and the technical roles, maybe less so in the other types of frontline work, where there’s still a lot of demand for workers. But yeah, it’s sometimes it’s so hard to know why you didn’t get a job. Often you do never find out. But even when you’re told face to face, which these cheerleaders are getting released from the team face to face, sometimes they’re not even really it’s just, oh, you’re not ready yet, maybe next year, right? It’s hard to even know.

Trish 24:35
Though, I would love to get your opinion on one specific thing you’re kind of talking about, which is, so what happens is they typically would have a practice with the larger group before they’ve gotten to that number of 36 and at the end of that, they might pick one or two or even three young women that they call out to come to their office afterward. So when they’re getting that feedback, one. One thing I found positive in that is that they’re typically not cutting someone on the first try without having any kind of feedback with them. So I did respect the fact that they’re calling them in and saying, look, it looks like you’re doing XYZ. Really great. We appreciate that, but you’re not able to kick high enough, right? And then they’re saying, we’re not cutting you today, but we’re so they’re almost like planting the seed, like, unless you have, by the next practice ability to do this thing, then you’re cut. So you sort of know, but I don’t know, how did you I don’t know how that would play out in other jobs. That seems like, yeah.

Steve 25:37
I mean, I guess you could look at it as like, maybe a probationary kind of period, and other jobs or, you know, like, or a job where you’re hired for two weeks, there’s some of the service jobs are like that. I know in like, in certain like, I’ve heard of bartending jobs which are like that, you get hired, but maybe you’ve got a week of kind of probation, and you get four or five shifts, and at the end of those shifts, you’re going to get assessed again, and maybe you’ll get offered to stay on or you won’t, right? So I do think that makes some sense. Look, I didn’t have as many problems with this organization and how it’s run in the selection process, which I had a couple which I mentioned. But my main problems with this, as I said, What drew me to even doing this in the first place was the really famous, almost notorious stories we read about the the low compensation and high combined with very high demands that are placed on these cheerleaders, both high demands of time and high physical demands, leading to, in many cases, a lot of injuries as well. Right, right? The Netflix documentary doesn’t really skirt the it skirts the compensation discussion. It really doesn’t focus on it. I don’t recall them even talking about it. And so I did a little bit of research. And much like many other organizations, the Dallas Cowboys, do not like to talk very much about this, and they try to keep this kind of under wraps.

Steve 27:04
But there are, there’s been a number of reports about this that would suggest that the cheerleaders themselves, once they’re on the team, they’re compensated somewhere between $15 and $20 per hour for their time they spent working, which is essentially their practices and their rehearsals, and for games that are paid between $400-500 per game. Now it appears like they only really work the home games. So that’s about 10 games, maybe 11, depending on playoffs and things like that, per season, plus lots of time. It’s hard to know how much exactly spent in rehearsals. They seem to rehearse almost every day. And at one point, Trish and in the documentary, at towards the end of the season, when things get busy with holidays and appearances and things like that, the Cowboys famously play a Thanksgiving Day game every year. Right? Cheerleaders have to work. That at one point it stated that the girls had to, the cheerleaders had to work 21 consecutive days they were working right at one point towards the end of the season. So they’re putting lots of time for really kind of the same kind of pay you could get right going to work as a cashier at the Home Depot, right? But, you know, essentially, and really put two things were happening there a lot of pressures put on them, incredibly high performance expectations, lots of physicality and even some injuries. Right as we see and documentary does a pretty good job of telling the story of one former cheerleader who had to have multiple surgeries due to injuries from her time as a cheerleader. So Trish, let’s just talk a little bit about the compensation thing, because that’s probably the thing that people know the most in terms of the workplace connection with this story. What are your thoughts about, let’s just say, for the argument’s sake, that the numbers I threw out there are close enough to true or true. What would you kind of respond to that?

Trish 28:55
Yeah, I think the numbers similar to you. I looked them up too. I actually found a Time article, the numbers were 2022. Very similar to what you said, $500 a game or so. I did read, and this was all found in Time Magazine. They were talking about how they are, along with the Carolina Panthers cheerleaders, the highest paid cheerleaders in the NFL. They can make up to $75,000 a year in this part time role. So that thought that was interesting. So we hear a lot about how much per game, but when I didn’t realize they were being paid for all the practices, appearances and other things like, I wasn’t sure how that worked. Now, again, when you, if you sort of take out, say, the 10 games, roughly at 500 a game, you’re still talking about a lot of hours. They’re working, even though they’re part time to get up to them. Yeah, 75k That’s a lot of hours, if that’s true. Um, I did look up just for comparison, what the top 10 highest paid cheerleaders in the NBA make. I’ll only give you the top two. Two for time. But the New York Knicks cheerleaders and the Atlanta Hawks cheerleaders make about 35,000 annually for a part time role. They’re getting 650 for every game. Nice.

Steve 30:12
Let me stop you there for a second. Yeah, we there. Say there’s 10-11, games in a season for these cowboys, cheerleaders, home games, right? Yeah, do the math and if they’re, if. But okay, so take that’s five, between five and $6,000 so let’s just argument sake, say they’re, they’re making another $60,000 based on all those other hours, $60,000 at $20 an hour, the high end of the range we read that’s 3000 hours, right? It’s not possible, right? It’s not possible because a normal full time job in the United States, right? 50 weeks at 40 hours a week is 2000 hours, right? Right? So to work 3000 hours at $20 an hour, to make 60 grands and just not possible. Right? It’s just not possible. In a football season, you’d be working 18 hour days every day. So something’s not right. Then the math’s mathing as the kids say.

Trish 31:12
I thought, Okay? And I mean, we’re looking at reputable sources, so that’s why it’s a little odd.

Steve 31:16
So the idea that they’re making $75,000 a year seems probably not possible, probably.

Trish 31:24
Maybe in that 30 to 35,000 range.

Steve 31:28
Where I have a problem with it, Trish, is that the expectations, the demands, coupled with right, the Dallas Cowboys franchise, okay.

Trish 31:41
I know it was the first sports franchise

Steve 31:43
in the whole entire world. Yeah, to be valued. And Forbes is the the company that puts out these valuations. Forbes has valued the Cowboys franchise as being worth 10 billion 10 billion with a B, they’re the most, they’re the highest value sports franchise in the entire world, including all the soccer teams in Europe, right? All the other football teams here, basketball, you name it. So it’s an they and these girls are told over and over and over again, oh, it’s such a big deal. It’s so important, it’s so prestigious, it’s so it’s what an honor to be here, etc, etc, representing this brand. Don’t tarnish the star and all this nonsense. Oh yeah, for an organization with 10 billion who essentially is getting away with paying these cheerleaders as little as they can get away with, because they know there’s a lot of applicants out there, and if one cheerleader raised her hand to say, you know, I don’t think I’m getting compensated enough. I demand more. They would just cut her and bring in somebody else immediately. Absolutely.

Trish 32:47
Yeah, so, and can I add too? I don’t know. If you look this up, I looked up, what is the lowest cowboy salary?

Steve 32:56
It’s gonna be a couple of million dollars, right? No, 832,500

Trish 33:01
now that’s to sit the bench, to sit the now, you do go through practice, right? They are practicing, that’s true, and traveling, but to literally sit the bench.

Steve 33:13
$800,000 Yeah. I wouldn’t make an argument that the cheerleaders deserve, you know, pay parity with the players. I wouldn’t make that argument, right? Because the players and the game are what kind of make the whole thing possible. That’s why.

Trish 33:26
The physicality for the players is quite a bit more in terms.

Steve 33:30
The level at which, you know, the cheerleaders are compensated, to me, is unconscionable, especially at those very, very high ends. The most prestigious team, the most prestigious cheerleading squad, right? We’re not making documentaries about, sadly, the New York Jets cheerleaders, right? Nobody cares about them, right? So, right, right. I do think that’s something.

Trish 33:52
Can I give you one other fun fact that kind of made me mad. It might make you bad. The average, the typical. It says this is on the Pro Football network says this, the typical salary of the NFL water boy is 50 to 60,000 a year.

Steve 34:08
It’s ridiculous, right? So I we could go on and on about this. I leave it at that. You know, one of the reasons why people employees go to look for to union representation. This is exactly the thing we’re talking about here. They need it, because they could use representation in so for so many reasons, for the workplace, rules and hours, their compensation. Certainly, you know, we learn about one of the former cheerleaders who’s undergone multiple surgeries they never mentioned in the documentary. Who’s actually paying for all these surgeries and all for her health care. And whether or not these women are actually covered at all by the Dallas Cowboys.

Trish 34:50
I don’t believe they are. If they are, they’ve not. You can’t find that.

Steve 34:54
It seems unlikely, right? So those are all the reasons why. So that would be my my. Last thing I’ll say in terms of compensation, because it’s really egregious, quite frankly.

Trish 35:05
Yeah, I agree. And I think too for these women, whether it’s a physical injury, or for some it’s physical and mental, like an emotional because this is grueling. It’s almost hard to watch. Sometimes, the way that feedback is given. It’s things I would never, ever say in a workplace in that way, right? Even if someone isn’t meeting guidelines, criteria, what, what have you, it’s the way that the message is delivered is often cruel, in my opinion, yeah, and I’m just one person, but I read an article where they were talking about that Kelly, who is, you know, Kelly and Kelly thin glass, the DCC director and Judy Trammell, the DCC head choreographer. I don’t know what Judy makes, but Kelly makes $1.5 million a year. She has full benefits. She has every single thing at her disposal. These young women, apparently, they are allowed to go to the mental health providers there if they want to. But I was thinking like in these jobs, they probably can’t. They probably don’t feel comfortable going to sort of in your within, within the walls of the organization, right? It’s not like they can go to a mental health professional outside to get some assistance they’re having to it’s so insular. It’s just, I don’t know. I just feel like these girls are not being really cared for at all.

Steve 36:34
Yeah, I’m glad you mentioned that, Trish, because the documentary makes a point of saying, right at the beginning, the owner of the Cowboys makes a point of saying that the cheerleaders unit has become like a self sustaining business unit their own. That’s a multi million dollar business, yes, their own profit center, right in the team organization. And if that report is correct, I saw the same report Trish about Kelly, who’s the director’s annual salary estimated to be $1.5 million yeah, the pay disparity there, right? We read about this a lot in industry, right? The pay disparity between CEOs and average workers is growing and growing and growing that disparity, and that’s a show, another show we can do all about that. But if those numbers are accurate, what we think the cheerleaders are being paid, and what this director is being paid, that would put this organization right at the top, right in terms of pay disparity between the leader of the organization and what the normal worker, right, earns for the organization. It’s shocking, right? The disparity. So I know I’m not saying Kelly should make less salary, right? I’m all for people getting whatever they can get in the free market, but I do feel like, in some cases, and this is one of them, the free market, the free labor market, is not really working right for these cheerleaders.

Trish 37:49
I mean, I think as a director, that’s, it’s fine that she makes that amount of money. She seems to work very hard. She and the choreographer, Judy, are there all the time with these young women. You know, they’re, they’re putting in the hours they’re away from their families. They’re, you know, they have the pressure of bringing in this as a profit center, right? Because when both of them, also, both of them were DCC cheerleaders back in the early 80s, yeah, and it was not bringing in a profit at that point. So I think some of the I’ll ask it instead of saying it, we are of a certain age, right? And I fall into this a little bit sometimes. I always stop myself. But do you ever find that when you’re thinking of people who are in their 20s, say, like many of these cheerleaders, you sort of feel like, well, I paid my dues, I put in my hours, I worked so much overtime, I didn’t get paid enough. And it’s sort of like, I wonder if part of what the mindset is at the DCC and these other cheer organizations is like, well, we we had to go through this, and we turned out just fine, and we have lots of opportunities. Now, I’m not saying it’s right. I just do you? Do you think that’s coming into play at all? Or am I just misreading that?

Steve 39:06
I don’t know if it’s coming into play here? If I had a guess, I’d say this is more about an imbalance of power, and since the organization knows that, through a lot of hard work, and you know, and some of which was done by the director and the choreographer. Certainly, through a lot of hard work and a lot of history, this particular organization has achieved almost a power imbalance over the people who want to work there, right? And this happens occasionally in industries, right? We see it like, you know, it’s certain times it ebbs and flows. But I would say right now, probably a company like, you know, Google or Apple or Nvidia may have a little bit more power right over work workplaces, because so many people want to come and work there, although Trish, even in those industries, we don’t see this kind of, you know. So I guess because there’s enough competition for talent amongst, say, tech workers in this example, that salaries and wages just keep going up, right? I guess right now, since the the Cowboys are not the only cheerleading organization, but they’ve figured out how to be the one everybody who’s a high end performer or dancer wants to work for I feel like they’re exploiting that position. And they just they, at no point in this documentary do anybody even suggest that, boy, we should treat these cheerleaders a little bit better and pay them a little bit more, right? There’s they. They would never feel like they need to, right? And consequently, they won’t, I’m, I suspect, until, until, as and when they need to, and they may never need to, but it’s that’s the challenge there. And I think I don’t want to, like, can make this whole show about the cheerleaders don’t get paid enough. They clearly don’t.

Steve 40:55
But one of the things you mentioned Trish about the directors and how hard they work, etcetera, etcetera, I wanted to talk about the next kind of workplace topic in this documentary, which is work life balance, right? And now both the director and the choreographer are paid pretty well. They’re full time employees. Sure. They do seem to be working all the time, which seems baffling to me that you know, a cheerleading director for a football team is going to be that busy year round, but at one point, the owner of the team, who’s actually technically the daughter of the owner of the team, but who’s involved in some of the team management and decisions about the cheerleaders who are going to make the team, etc, She literally says that she wants Kelly the director. She wants Kelly to be laying up awake at night worried about this. She just says it out loud, right? Like so the demands from the people who own the Cowboys on these employees, not the cheerleaders. Now I’m talking about but the full time employees, they seem incredibly high as well. Now I’m not playing a violin for the $1.5 million director of the Cowboys Cheerleaders, she’s doing just fine, but the demands on their time and their attention and their dedication are quite high, to the point where they seem to just have no life outside of work. And the director even says in one of her little confessionals to the camera, like, Oh, her home life and her work life, it’s all the same. There’s no difference. I can’t tell the difference anymore. And she’s always working. And they, they hint at that, to the detriment of even some of her personal relationships, including with her own children. So sure, yeah. So there that it’s, that’s, that’s kind of a Gen X vibe too, by the way, that just working all the time thing.

Trish 42:42
That’s what I was a little bit trying to get at. I feel like it’s sort of like you feel like you have to do that, you have to pay your dues all along the way. And there is a cost to having a huge salary. There is, you know, even not a huge seller, just a nice, hefty salary, right? Like, there have been times in my career where I’ve been working 15, 16, 17, hours a day, and not in, you know, you’re, you’re having meetings in multiple time zones, from like Asia Pacific to the US to Europe to, you know what I mean? Like, I know you’ve been in those jobs too, but at some point, what, I’m intrigued by is, like, Kelly, the director, has stayed in this job for like, 30 some odd years, so it’s a conscious choice that she’s made before she even had a family, yeah, like, this is what I want to do. So I don’t know, I just it felt a little cultish to me. I guess, is maybe the what I would compare it to, I or like a sorority of sorts, like that. It goes back to that. It’s a privilege. It’s a sisterhood. We all have the same purpose and passion. It’s a little cultish to me, and I don’t even know if she realizes sometimes that she’s caught up in it.

Steve 43:58
There’s a shocking lack of perspective amongst most of the people in this documentary, not the cheerleaders so much, but the certainly the directors, the owners of the team, look, it’s fine to be, you know, it’s fine to be engaged in your work. And we all strive for that, and organizations strive to have like those high levels of engagement, but yeah, they figured out a way, somehow right for in this organization to, yeah, push it more towards this cult like devotion, much to the detriment of many of their their personal lives, and certainly for the cheerleaders, to the detriment of their earning potential and certainly their physical ramifications in terms of injuries, exhaustion and having to maintain those performance standards as well as those appearance standards, right? I mean, right, there’s a scene in there where the director of the team is. Be Waiting high definition, close up still photos of the cheerleaders and telling her to change the makeup application on her lower eyelid, or something like that. It’s, it’s a lot, which is crazy, but somehow, that’s what’s going on in this organization. Very strange.

Trish 45:21
It is very strange. And again, I think some of these women, they want it so badly they’re in it once they make it, then they want to. When you looked at the couple that we’re having, maybe have gained a few pounds, and they come back, you know, the next year, and they’re being told they’re overweight, basically. So it’s giving, you know, pressure that causes them to have eating disorders and just an unhealthy life. And I don’t know, I do. I know that dancers especially have to go through, you know, dancers of all kinds have to go through very rigorous procedures to not procedures, but just practices on their own to stay fit, right, like any athlete. But again, I think it’s a little bit on delivery, you know, to tell someone that they can’t they’re weighing too much. When, when I went and looked that up and it says, You should be well proportioned, I would argue this girl was absolutely well proportioned, and, my goodness, she looked great. And I don’t know, I feel like in other parts of our culture, you’re starting to see better representation of all body types again, as long as they’re able to meet the dance criteria, right? There are many dancers of all sizes that are very effective at what they do?

Steve 46:41
Well, I’ll just say my expectation from watching this documentary is I don’t think we’re going to be seeing too many different body types on this cheerleading squad anytime soon.

Trish 46:51
No. And not only is it your makeup and your weight, it’s also things like hair color. I mean, at one point I think it was Judy said it. But anyway, when she’s setting up the formations, and she says she’s doing it by hair color, she doesn’t want two people with the same hair color, like next to each other. And so if your hair is the wrong color, they will take you. They take a lot of the girls and give them makeovers, and it’s not what the girls want. They don’t get any. They just have to take it. Oh, if I came to work and you said, you said, You know what, Trish, I feel like you need to have red hair because it doesn’t look right when we’re on camera, I would be like, that’s insane. Like, what in the world?

Steve 47:31
Yeah, and that’s, I guess, what I mean by when I say, a healthy dose of perspective would benefit a lot of the folks in this organization. And look it, they’ve taken sort of this striving for excellence, which is talked about a lot in the documentary, how the director, particularly she’s she’s lauded for her commitment to detail and striving for excellence and not settling always wanting the best. They certainly take it too far on, you know, by any normal, rational person’s view.

Trish 48:04
Like she was brainwashed long ago. Yeah, you’re talking about

Steve 48:07
the performance of cheerleaders in a 90,000 person football stadium where the vast majority of people are only going to see them on this big screen. That’s, you know, part of the jumbo trying to talk about the lower eyelid makeup being slightly off, right? It’s insane and bizarre. Trish, the last thing I want to talk about, and you might have others, is just a little bit about the safety here, yes, and because it spins into potential harassment, okay? And I’m not talking about the safety in terms of injuries from the physical nature of the job, which is certainly an element here in the show, but also towards the end of the documentary, one of the cheerleaders performing during a game is inappropriately touched, yes, by a photographer who’s there working the game. She reports the incident to security, who then reports it to the police. And it’s a good chunk of the last kind of episode and a half, maybe a documentary. And it underscores, to me, Trish, just something we’ve talked about off and on over the years, and you’ve talked about a lot more than me. Obviously, you know, from your perspective, is women in the workplace today are have to put up with so much nonsense, and Bs and they’re often having to just turn the other cheek. They’re often not believed. They’re often discouraged from reporting incidents, whether they’re verbal or physical types of harassment. I think when the harassment incident was reported, they sort of did mostly the right thing by her, I think. And then I won’t spoil with what actually happens with the incidents in the documentary, but Trish, I don’t know, just from your perspective as an HR leader, but certainly as a woman too, like just the workplace harassment element here rears its ugly head. Before the documentary is over.

Trish 50:01
Yeah, that was actually the, probably the most upsetting thing of the entire documentary watching. I understand, I’ve been on the HR side. You do have to investigate these things. You do have to, if you have video proof, obviously things like that, you would want that. But in the moment that I felt like in the moment, they did not comfort this young woman in the way that I would have done it if it were me, if this was someone at my company, I would have done much more, I think, to not just document but to comfort. So I thought that element was missing. I didn’t feel like they didn’t believe her, but it was a big deal to her.

Trish 50:41
This was someone that really touched like all the way down her back and lower. And it’s not, you know what? I’m just gonna say. It’s not even just in the workplace. I think I read something recently where it said that if you’re a female, and especially female, not that it doesn’t happen to males, too, but specifically, if you’re a female, you really just want people, friends, a partner, spouse, whatever, who will make you feel safe and protected. That is, like our number one need as as women, is safety and that we want, we can’t really perform effectively in any role in our life if we don’t feel safe. And I felt like this girl is being asked to they did pull her, eventually, off the field, but But to go back out, even after that, and perform when she doesn’t feel safe. So I do think that organizations, especially when you have women in roles where they are maybe less stressed, you know, and out there, they should have had security watching and being there so that they they don’t give the opportunity as easily for people to have access to these young women. We look at them and we think, yes, they are grown, but I’m sorry, my daughter is 20, almost 21 I would protect her with my life to prevent someone from touching her inappropriately. And unfortunately, nowadays, women are touched all the time, both inside the workplace and outside the workplace, without our consent. And it’s, I’d say, you’re hard pressed to find someone who hasn’t had it happen.

Steve 52:30
Yeah, it’s a sad, sad truth. Trish, and I’ve heard the story many, many times, both from you and others. And it’s do better, I guess is all I’d say to the vast majority of people who are doing this are men, and you just do better.

Trish 52:45
Do better. But also, for any person listening, I don’t care if you’re in HR or just any other business, whatever your role is at work, for the people that are in your line of vision, help them feel safe. I don’t care if it’s your boss, right, make them feel safe. Make it a safe environment. And if I were to tell any organization what to focus more money on, it would be that making all your employees, all of them, feel like they are safe at work from being touched or have things said that are inappropriate. It’s worth it.

Steve 53:21
Yeah, we haven’t done this in a while. It’s probably worth digging into this topic some more. Trish, maybe updating it, maybe getting someone on the podcast to talk a little bit about workplace safety and what’s going on, and maybe just yeah, some strategies to help people feel more safe at work, specifically, yeah.

Trish 53:39
And also to be then what? How do you report that safely? Yeah, you know, because I think people struggle with the repercussions. Yeah, you might be able to go to HR and tell them.

Steve 53:51
I think, and there’s a lot here too, so much like the compensation issues, the recruitment issues, kind of the performance standard issues, this workplace safety issues. There’s so much you could talk about in this, you know, that’s related to the world of work and the workplace from this documentary, which is why we decided to talk about it here on the show today. And it is, you know, it’s seven episodes long. Their episodes are probably 45 minutes to an hour a piece, so there’s quite a bit of content here to watch. But I would recommend this just to if you, if you haven’t really seen some of the nitty gritty of performance evaluations and recruiting processes and kind of the a high performance culture of the different kind, and some of the ramifications and the expectations on people and what it does to people. I think it’s what I’d recommend it for that, even if you don’t care about sports or care about Dallas, I don’t care about Dallas, but like I found it really worthwhile to watch and interesting, and I’d recommend it, and I’m glad we were able to take some time and talk about it too today.

Trish 54:53
Me too, I would say also, these young women are so entertaining. There were a lot of. Positives. I mean, like I kind of alluded to at the beginning, there are so many positives in the situation. And when you see the level of performance that these young women bring to the field each time they perform, when you see them out doing these different appearances, working with, you know, different organizations of people who are in need. It’s, it’s very inspiring. So I thought there was a lot of positive. It wasn’t just all negative. I think you and I are probably just more attuned to some of the, some of the workplace issues, but oh yeah, they’re beautiful performers. I’m amazed. They can do these dances. Honestly, I think they said they have to know roughly 300 dances, and some are longer, like Thunderstruck that they’re known for is a longer, full length song, but yeah, at any moment they hear those first few bars of a song, they have to know it’s like 300 different routines. Yeah, yeah, they’re brilliant women.

Steve 56:00
They do a ton of work, and they’re not paid enough for it, as I said, but really fascinating. Good, a couple of good celebrity cameos in the documentary, a Dolly Parton cameo as well as Emmett Smith cameo. Maybe there’s least one other I’m forgetting, but check it out. It’s America’s Sweethearts, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. It’s on Netflix, seven episodes. If you don’t have Netflix, call you up. Your cousin, get there, log in, I’m sure they have it, and check it out. So, Trish, good stuff. Great to, great to chat about this. I love, I love doing these shows where you and I get to chat for a while, and we don’t have to, like, you know, worry about taking care of some guests. Massive ego, quite frankly.

Trish 56:39
Just your ego.

Steve 56:41
Just my massive ego.

Trish 56:43
You know what? I think these are fun too, because it does put us back with our HR hats on, and we have to really, really pay attention and look for issues and and for me, I don’t know about for you, I think it’s for you too. It puts me in the seat of like, okay, how would I handle this? Would I handle it? Similar? Different? How would it be different? It’s good practice, I think. If also, if you’re new to HR and you’re listening to this, watch the show with that hat on, right, think about how would you handle this if you were the CHRO or the VP of HR, right?

Steve 57:14
We spent seven hours in this workplace, and not once anybody from HR even mentioned. We don’t see anybody from HR. They don’t talk about anybody from HR never comes up. No interesting enough.

Trish 57:25
I’ll tell you what it’s so, like I said, the show itself, it was called something different when it was on a different network and and that’s, it’s a 24/7 shown on Pluto TV, and I think, like Samsung plus, where you can just watch it for free. Yeah, they, they, these girls don’t really appear to be seeking for help. One thing I will say, I wish that the Netflix documentary would have given a little bit of content on some of the darker issues, and they really, I felt like, glossed over it and overall, made it look very positive. So to me, a documentary should dive into some of the some of the ugliness as well.

Steve 58:06
It is largely positive and yeah, mostly pans the cowboys in a positive light, mostly not completely. Well, we’ll leave folks to watch this and decide.

Trish 58:14
Yeah, watch it and see what you think. Please tell us.

Steve 58:18
Great stuff. Okay, so reminder, check out the show we did with Sholder, check out the Volunteers of America Colorado show, of course, hope you’re enjoying this show. Thanks to our friends at Paychex, of course, for all their support. Check out all the show archives at hrhappyhour.net and for Trish Steed,my name is Steve Boese, we will see you next time, and bye for now.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai