I just watched a great documentary called Live Nude Girls Unite! It’s about San Francisco strippers unionizing The Lusty Lady in San Francisco in the late nineties, and they made it the first unionized strip club in America.
It’s a little sad to see from The Lusty Lady link that all these years later they are still apparently “the only peep show in the world that is also a unionized, worker owned cooperative.”
This documentary from 2000 is a must see for anybody who’s worked as a stripper and ever got riled up because of the kind of management bullshit most outsiders couldn’t begin to comprehend.
It’s also a must see for anybody interested in worker’s struggles in general and the challenges of unionizing. Live Nude Girls Unite! is a really good 80 minute look behind the scenes of a varied and oft misunderstood industry that has some unique problems some people would shrug their shoulders at, saying it’s just par for the course for those kind of women.
Frustrated because you’re always having to cover your boss’s ass? How about having to blow him to get your shifts next week?
I met several of the women associated with this film back in the early 2000s. I have fond memories of going to their Exotic Dancer’s Alliance meetings, which was founded by the original plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Mitchell Brothers.
Dawn Passar, Daisy Anarchy and Johanna Breyer, led the Exotic Dancer’s Alliance meetings and they were part of the unionizing activities of The Lusty Lady. They gave me a tremendous amount of support as I contemplated legal action against a club. (I filed with the Labor Board and prevailed).
It’s sad because the industry is so chaotic and competitive it’s not one that’s easily unionized. Apparently, no other club since has done it. The Exotic Dancer’s Alliance also no longer exists, strictly speaking, but has been absorbed by BAYSWAN, the Bay Area Sex Worker Advocacy Network.
BAYSWAN, thank goodness, is still actively addressing the rights and concerns of all kinds of sex workers; strippers, porn stars, prostitutes, etc.
I certainly hope that any woman who’s current hobby is contemporary exotic dance, (particularly burlesque and pole dance) never forgets to think kindly of her sex worker sisters.
