Strippers Now Leaders in 21st Century Labor Movement, NYT Reports

Strippers are the “canary in the coal mine” of labor issues in the 21st century, according to Michael LeRoy, a labor law professor at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who is quoted in a lengthy New York Times report this week that takes a deep dive into the movement to organize strippers “against decades of exploitation,” according to the paper.  Decades before the internet-driven “gig economy”—in which workers function as “independent contractors,” renting themselves out on a short-term or piece-work basis, with no benefits or even guaranteed minimum pay—strippers were going through a reclassification of their jobs that stripped them of their rights as workers. Strippers in Atlanta, San Jose and San Francisco attempted to organize into unions in the 1980s and ’90s, according to the 2006 book Sex Worker Union Organising: An International Study, but got nowhere. According to the Times report, however, strippers across the country are finding new ways to organize, often using technology, as Los Angeles dancer Crissa Parker has, by creating an app—downloadable from the Apple or Google Play app stores—called The Dancer’s Resource. The app aggregates opinions submitted by strippers themselves to rate strip clubs based on their working conditions and treatment of dancers. Parker herself told the Times that when she once asked a club manager for a copy of her contract—a minimal requirement for any employee or contractor—“the manager ripped it up in front of her face.” Her story is far from unique, according to the Times report, in which other dancers say they have simply been barred from working in clubs after asking to inspect or negotiate their work contracts. A California Supreme Court ruling last year, as AVN.com has reported, came down in favor of reclassifying “independent contractors” as employees, and though the ruling ostensibly had nothing to do with the adult entertainment industry, the court’s opinion affected strippers directly. The ruling, said Antonia Crane—founder of the stripper organizing group Soldiers of Pole—could help strippers effectively form a labor union. “Right now, the Supreme Court is saying, ‘You don’t even have to convince us,’” Crane told Times reporter Valeriya Safronova. “‘You’re employees, you have rights and the ability to organize.’” On the other hand, the ruling did not go over well with many strippers, who said that the reclassification could cost them their anonymity, as well as the ability to leave work each night with cash in hand—or even make them subject to even more unreasonable rules laid down by club owners. “Employers might require us to give free nude performances for customers we don’t feel comfortable with,” wrote Stormy Daniels in an op-ed opposing the ruling, as reported by AVN.com. “These are highly personal decisions and the power to make them should be exclusively in the hands of dancers.” But similar reclassifications have worked in strippers’ favor. According to LeRoy, who has studied employment status cases, 93 percent of court rulings have held that strippers were improperly classified, resulting in millions in back wages and “stage fees” paid by clubs in lawsuits. Even legal actions have not produced lasting changes in strippers’ work conditions, again highlighting the need for for more widespread labor organizing in the live performance branch of the adult business. “I signed on to one lawsuit,” one stripper told the Times. “They paid out, and nothing changed.” Photo By Dani_vr / Wikimedia Commons