New London ― Spirit Gallery Tattoo on Colman Street, known for its New Orleans-inspired ambience and custom tattoos, closed earlier this year.
Now the state’s Department of Wages and Workplace Standards is investigating the claims of five workers at the store. Two of the workers making claims told The Day that the owners are under investigation for misrepresenting their workers as independent contractors.
Independent contractors, unlike employees, are not entitled to health insurance, social security, unemployment benefits, or workers’ compensation.
Labor Department spokeswoman Juliet Manalan confirmed the investigation into the allegations. She said it could take six months or more for the case to be resolved, depending on the scale of the problem. The wage unit works with employers to collect arrears of wages due, may issue penalties or refer the case to the Attorney General or Chief Prosecutor if necessary.
Spirit Gallery Tattoo moved to Colman Street in 2019. Former owner Lari Mostro died in 2022, after which Michael Dodd, Mostro’s longtime partner, and Mostro’s husband Frank Kucienski took over.
According to land records, COLMAN LLC purchased the two buildings at 377 Colman St. that house the Spirit Gallery and The Fog Factory in 2021 for $310,000. Kucienski and Dodd are listed as principal members of COLMAN LLC.
Dodd did not respond to phone and text messages about the state investigation, and Kucienski was unavailable.
After being fired in November, tattoo artist Chad Wilson filed a complaint with the Department of Labor, claiming the shop owed him more than $30,000 in unpaid wages.
Wilson said he started working at the salon in August 2022 after responding to an ad for a full-time tattoo artist and was hired by Dodd. Wilson was informed that he would be classified as an independent contractor, which he said was standard practice in the tattoo world.
Arianna Brett, who started working at the store two months before Wilson, said independent contractors are, in a sense, their own business owners, scheduling their own hours and paying individual taxes.
But Brett said they were asked to work on the premises from 12pm to 8pm and come half an hour earlier.
“It’s like we’re on a time clock without a time clock,” she said.
Wilson said the artists should work 40 hours a week and attend an unpaid meeting once a month that lasted a few hours.
They should also share half of their hourly earnings with the store.
Wilson said tattoos cost $150 an hour, so the artist was making $75 an hour; and it cost $165 for tattoo covering. That didn’t include the time it took to draw and dream up a tattoo before the appointment.
Wilson, who has been tattooing for 26 years, wasn’t a fan of this arrangement. Wilson said he can finish a tattoo in an hour or two, while the person next to him could take up to five hours if they’ve only been tattooing for two or three years.
Most importantly, he said it makes him an employee, not an independent contractor.
“I’m learning that this is a common problem in the tattoo industry because owners aren’t held accountable to the fullest extent of the law,” Wilson said. “I just want all tattoo artists to have the same rights as any other employee.”
The state Department of Labor has a test called the “ABC test” to determine if someone is an employee or an independent contractor.
To be considered an independent contractor, someone “A” must be free from direction and control in connection with their service; “B”, provide their service “either outside of the usual business operations of the Employer or outside of all of the Employer’s places of business”; and “C” usually be engaged in an “independently established trade, profession, occupation or business of a similar nature to the service rendered”.
Brett said that labeling her and her fellow artists as independent contractors exempted owners from paying certain taxes, unemployment and maternity leave. Brett is 35 weeks pregnant.
Brett, who is married to a state police officer, said she’s lucky not to have to work there, but tattooing is her favorite pastime. She said many others depend on the job as their only source of income.
Spirit Gallery was Brett’s third business since she started tattooing in 2020. She said she had experienced fraud and similar wrongdoing in previous deals. She said she started at Spirit making $100 an hour before eventually being upgraded to $150. She had to return half of it to the store.
When she started, she didn’t get a contract. She said the artists didn’t receive payslips or anything like that.
Brett said a customer would pay at the front desk with either cash or a credit card. If paying in cash, the artist would be paid out in cash with his tip immediately after the appointment. If paying by card, the artist would be paid by check on Mondays.
But she said all she received were mobile deposits into her checking account. There was little to no paper trail.
“Nothing stopped them from skimming the top,” she said.
Brett now works at Midnight Angel in Groton, where she is still considered an independent contractor, but she signed a contract when she was hired and is able to set her own hours.
Brett and Wilson were among seven tattoo artists, a body piercer, and three receptionists at Spirit Gallery. Brett said the artists left one by one after Wilson left until she said there was hardly anyone left. She resigned on January 2.
Wilson filed for unemployment two days after being fired. Workers misclassified as self-employed contractors have an opportunity to qualify for unemployment benefits. That was proven last year in a Connecticut Supreme Court case entitled Vogue v. Administrator, Unemployment Compensation Act, ruled.
Similar to this case, Vogue, a body art and piercing company in Waterford, offered tattoo services performed by a tattoo artist classified as an independent contractor. The artist performed the tattooing services himself, provided his own materials and set the price for such services. He would keep 50% of the client’s sales and pass the other 50% on to the company.
The court found that the business failed to meet all three parts of the ABC test because, among other things, the tattoo services were not outside of its “usual course of business.”
After three months of deliberation, Wilson said he started receiving $82 a week in unemployment benefits in February. He said the state has not responded to an appeal he filed Dec. 8 for a higher amount.
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