Dancers and sex workers lift the lid on workplace exploitation
Members of the Fired Up Stilettos collective met with MPs on Thursday evening lobbying Parliament about the labour conditions at adult entertainment venues that they are calling exploitative and abusive.MONIQUE FORD / Stuff
Bachelors and masters graduates, a public health researcher, writer, activists and a mother are among a collective of strippers and sex workers who have spoken at Parliament, lobbying about their working conditions.
Members of the Fired Up Stilettos collective described their relationship with venue management at strip clubs as abusive and exploitative.
Green MP Jan Logie invited the dancers who spoke about the conditions on the ground as independent contractors – some of whom were fired last month after bargaining collectively for better contracts.
Wellington’s Calendar Girls had increasingly taken a higher cut of the dancers’ profits which was set most recently at over 60% in the 2023 contract.
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The dancers spoke of feeling empowered joining the industry and the love for what they did. “The nature of our work is not the problem,” one dancer, Karma* said.
But her equal share of positive and negative experiences were influenced by management who would threaten them with fines.
One member of the Fired Up Stilettos collective says ‘’venues are aware of the inconsiderable barriers that we face in being able to stand up for ourselves or assert our rights as workers’’.MONIQUE FORD / Stuff
“You start losing the power to determine how someone touches your body, how you do your work and how you keep yourself safe,” she said.
Another dancer spoke of being yelled at when alcohol reacted badly with her medication, leaving her dangerously drunk.
“Instead of being helped home by management, I was followed around and screamed at for what felt like hours until I was lying on the locker room floor crying in fear,” Eve* said.
After 19 dancers were fired by management at Wellington’s Calendar Girls, the collective was formed to petition and protest for better work conditions.Supplied / Stuff
Through tears, dancer Ginger* spoke of watching other workers being “torn down and mocked by management” and suddenly finding themselves fired when attempting to negotiate their work terms.
“Independent negotiation is nonviable with the culture in our industry,” she said. “The act of signing a collective petition, wasn’t an attempt to cartel bargaining, it was an act of desperation.”
Another called the relationship with venue management psychologically abusive. Clauses in their contract that stopped dancers from being able to work at other venues, left them “financially dependent on your abuser”.
Green Party MP Jan Logie who invited members from the collective to speak, said the work conditions the dancers spoke of were ‘’unacceptable’’.MONIQUE FORD / Stuff
Renee, one of the recently fired dancers, said institutions such as WorkSafe, Employment Relations Authority and the court system, who were tasked with protecting them, had “consistently failed us”.
In one example, a dancer, present at the meeting said she had her right to fair trial taken from her after being sexually assaulted at a strip club “because of prejudice and stigma”.
She was advised to take a plea bargain because of what the jury was likely to think of her job.
Former stripper and now independent escort Bee says many across the globe were watching to see how Aotearoa would respond to the petition.MONIQUE FORD / Stuff
“I’m proud of my job, but I am not just a stripper, I am a citizen of Aotearoa, I am a wāhine, I am Ngāti Raukawa, I am a human being,” she said.
Logie acknowledged the dancers’ bravery and said the stories told were “unacceptable”.
“Physical or not, it’s violence”, she said of the conditions.
The collective would submit their petition on Friday. It requested that the House of Representatives establish the right of independent adult workers to collectively bargain while maintaining an independent contract status, outlaw all fines and bonds between and employers and contractors, and establish a nationwide mandatory maximum of 20% that an employer can take from a contractor’s profits.
Bee, who previously worked in strip clubs but is now an independent escort, said Aotearoa set international standards for sex work labour rights 20 years ago when it became the first country to decriminalise sex work, passing the Prostitution Reform Act.
'Stripping was all I had': Former dancer exposes Calendar Girls' rules and fines
Documents seen by Stuff illustrate strict rules that dancers must adhere to, or face fines in the form of pay deductions. (First published in 2017)
“As a sex worker whose labour now generally consists of being alone in a hotel room with a strange man, I am safer, more legally protected and have greater control over my labour power than any dancer at a strip club in all of New Zealand,” she said.
The collective acknowledged coercion and financial exploitation was also an issue for sex workers in brothels.
The collective had been contacted by strippers from around the motu, Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom who said they experienced the same struggles with management, watching how Aotearoa would respond.
Calendar Girls said in an earlier statement that while the percentage cut for service had dropped, the dollar amounts of payments to strippers had increased. With “hindsight”, the club should have been increasing the cost of services more frequently.
*Not their real names. Others asked only to use their first names.
March 10, 2023, • 11:14am