The Strippers' Union Faces Employers' Trump Card

[Omaha Steve]

https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/star-gardens-union/?custno=

Economy / July 31, 2024

Hell-bent on stopping workers from unionizing, employers will sometimes shut down a location or an entire business—that’s what happened at the Star Garden topless bar in LA.



Lilith and Velveeta used to love dancing at the Star Garden topless bar in Los Angeles. A large stage and free rein to pick their own music fostered a creative group of dancers who became close-knit.

But when a new owner took over in 2021, much of what had made the bar feel like a haven changed. The new owner instituted lap dance quotas that put pressure on dancers to “hustle out dances,” Velveeta said. (Dancers’ stage names have been used to protect their privacy.) There was a disturbing lack of safety. While dancing, Lilith recalled, she was bitten, licked, groped, and slapped by customers. Security staff often saw what was happening, but, unlike at other clubs, they didn’t intervene, dancers said, and the owner instituted a rule that dancers could no longer flag them down to ask for help. It was common knowledge among dancers, Lilith said, that “if a customer was spending money and the bar was making money off the customer, if that customer did anything to a dancer it would not be egregious enough for them to be kicked out.” Management let customers stay late to observe dancers as they cashed out and then watch what cars they drove home, which left dancers fearful for their safety.

Concerned, in March 2022 the Star Garden dancers came together and drafted a petition that they presented to management demanding better protection from the club and rules for customers around things like filming dancers and egregiousness drunkenness. “We knew that we had to do something collectively to try to make change,” said Velveeta. But when they showed up the next night to work their shifts, a security guard was posted in front with a rope across the door and said none of them were on the list to be let in. Locked out of their workplace, the Star Garden dancers launched a strike. They held nightly picket lines with different themes in front of the club, keeping the strike going for months.

Eventually, the dancers decided to form a union, and at the end of 2022 they voted unanimously to unionize with Actor’s Equity, becoming the only unionized strip club in the country at the time. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) helped the dancers broker a settlement with the owners in May of 2023 that stipulated that the club would reopen, the dancers would be offered their jobs and given back pay, and it would reverse the decision it had made during the strike to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

FULL story at link above.