Strippers And Giggers: Unionize Now
What many newly classified employees don’t realize with AB5 is they’re now one step closer to the right to bargain collectively.
I have seen stage poles break and fall from the ceiling, mid-song. I’ve seen a dancer collapse then convulse violently — her black, scuffed stilettos trembling beneath the curtain backstage — before she was spirited away on a stretcher.
I’ve danced topless while sprinklers flooded the dressing room and coworkers sprinted through smoke in rhinestone bikinis as our club caught on fire. I’ve stripped through electricity outages, club shootings, fistfights, and ever-overflowing toilets. I’ve been choked by a government official, robbed by a customer I later watched snatch my purse on security camera footage — all while managers did nothing.
And recently, one stripper told me her co-worker was sexually assaulted in a storage closet during a night shift, then, afterward, she was fired. “It happens to everybody,” she said. Working in these kinds of conditions where sexual assault is normalized is atrocious. Strippers, made vulnerable by our dress code and feminized gender performance, confront more workplace violence than many other physically taxing gigs and therefore, we need more workplace protections.
