In the fall of 1999, the old sign for the Capitol Theater in Olympia, Washington read: LIVE! NAKED! GIRLS! UNIT! At first glance, one might think it was going to be a show of sex workers dancing for a curious audience. The line of people gathered at the front of the theater to buy their tickets rolled up around the corner. Some came from as far away as California and Alaska to see a raw video shot, produced and directed by a Lusty Lady stripper in San Francisco. Julia Quiery helped Lusty Lady become the nation’s first unionized strip club and wanted others to know how it was done.
On a daily basis, for four years, Julia Quiery and other Lusty Lady women were subjected to racism; only one woman of color could be on stage at any one time, and it was a fact that “busty blondes” were the most popular dancers. There were scheduling problems that led to financial difficulties for employees; each dancer could only work 16 hours a week and no more than two shows in a row. Exploitation lurked around every corner. The peep show booths were one-way, so the dancers couldn’t see if the person watching them had a camera. Some women ended up on the Internet, others in low-class pornographic movies.
Faced with the dancers ‘concerns about the photographs and subsequent demands that the one-way mirrors be removed, the theater initially responded by dismissing the dancers’ concerns as frivolous. Annoyed dancers approached the Service Employees International Union. Once they were able to convince union representatives that they seriously wanted to form a union, organizing began in earnest.
After a year of organizing and five months of often bitter contract negotiations, employees of the exotic dancers union provided what the dancers asked for. The contract guaranteed work shifts for the 70-75 dancers, protection against arbitrary discipline and dismissal, automatic hourly wage increases, sick days, a contracted procedure for filing complaints against management, and removal of one-way mirrors from peep show booths. . Thirty cashiers and janitors earned higher salaries and improved health benefits.
Working with the Lusty Lady dancers was definitely an eye-opening experience for the folks at SEIU, according to Batey. “Before we started organizing at the Lusty,” she says, “people were not aware of the demographics of the dancers. We found that there were a lot of college students, women with a good political and academic education, who expressed themselves well” feminists, that they were concerned with the broader problems, that they approached the problems from a social point of view. “
In an August 1997 election, Lusty Lady employees overwhelmingly voted for union representation. The theater responded by hiring the legal services of a law firm widely known for effectively and aggressively fighting unions. Negotiations slowly preceded, much to the frustration of the SEIU and the dancers, as opposition attorneys appointed five separate attorneys as their negotiating representatives.
When the theater fired a dancer (Summer, a single mother), allegedly to intimidate other dancers, the women responded angrily with a wildcat strike and protests outside the theater. A lockout of all dancers for two and a half days hurt the protesters financially, but failed to end the protest or break the unity of the dancers. Eventually the theater relented, he rehired the fired dancer, and began serious negotiations with the union.
According to Batey, there have been a host of interested responses from the national press, including The New York Times, The Economist, Associated Press, and United Press International. Batey notes that since the contract was ratified, Lusty’s owners have cooperated with the union and seem eager to re-educate their managers on the why’s and rationale for the new industrial order. Show directors who couldn’t believe that they are now required to give union representatives a chance to speak to each new hire have been reminded that this is part of the new contract. An interim claims procedure provided for in the contract has worked well, according to Batey, and the first post-ratification meeting was recently scheduled to deal with claims, at the initiative of the theater, which Batey also sees as a good sign. Federal mediators were hired to train both management and employees on the practicalities of the new contractual arrangement, also at the request of the theater.
While the Lusty Lady contract may be the first contemporary employment agreement in the US covering strippers, it is unlikely to be the last. Before the San Francisco contract vote, in fact, even before the dancers voted for union representation, the other Lusty Lady theater in Seattle had taken note of the changing job landscape. The theater began encouraging dancers to attend company-sponsored employee meetings on paid hours. The non-union worker representatives elected at these meetings were recognized by the theater management as spokespersons for the group, presumably to show the dancers that the theater was interested in responding to their concerns and dissuading them from unionizing.
Following the ratification of the San Francisco contract, members of the San Francisco organizing committee traveled to Seattle where they met with dancers from Lusty Lady. They explained for the first time, from the dancers’ perspective, what the new union and contract was about, and how the new agreement would affect dancers in Seattle. In particular, they assured Seattle dancers that the traditional arrangement would be maintained, under which dancers could travel back and forth between the two theaters, working in both. The Seattle theater management responded to the San Francisco organizers’ visit with an immediate and unsolicited wage increase of $ 1 per hour for all dancers. A controversial theater policy that required dancers with tattoos or piercings to cover their body decorations while performing was also repealed.
San Francisco dancers at Market Street Cinema and New Century Theaters have reportedly reached out to SEIU about possible union representation, and Batey says he has also heard of possible union organizing for strippers in Houston, Texas.
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