Strippers and employment law in the United States and New Zealand

Washington strippers are finally protected by labor laws while New Zealand strippers are also fighting for their rights.

In the United States, strippers recently won an important victory to protect their working conditions, since in the state of Washington, in the northwest of the country, they now benefit from a law that protects them.

A long-term union struggle that is not confined to the United States. Also on the other side of the world, in New Zealand, strippers demonstrated in February 2024 under the windows of Parliament in Wellington and delivered a petition to MPs.

United States: Amounts paid to clubs are capped

Washington State has just passed a law that protects strippers. The Democratic senator who carried the project congratulates herself in a press release. She stood alongside the advocacy organization “Strippers Are Workers”. “L“Strippers are workers” for six years“and they should enjoy the same rights and protections as any other workforce”she writes. The text has therefore been promulgated since Monday March 25. It concerns 11 establishments in this northwestern American state. And it’s a real step forward for a profession that is not very regulated.

This law requires employees of establishments to be trained in the prevention of sexual harassment, conflict managementt to first aid. It also requires the presence of security agents in clubs,the codes in the locker roomst alert buttons in places where workers may find themselves alone with customers. The text finally plans to cap the fees that strippers, who are often treated as self-employed, must pay for the use of the club. They are capped at $150 or 30% of a dancer’s income per night, whichever is less.

A global movement in the United States

To finance this new framework, the state of Washington will authorize clubs to sell alcohol, which was forbidden to them until now. VSis only the second U.S. state to pass a law that protects adult entertainment workers. Only Illinois had done so before, in 2019. But there is a global movement in the United States to recognize the rights of strippers. With two examples last year: lWorkers at a bar in Los Angeles and those at an establishment in Portland won the right to unionize.

New Zealand: demands for all self-employed workers

In New Zealand, strippers want to rebalance the balance of power with their employers, namely the strip club owners, in their favor. To do this, they want, unlike their American colleagues, to maintain their status as independent workers, but while having the possibility of negotiating collectively, through a union. At the same time, they are also asking legislators to prohibit, or at least limit certain practices imposed by club owners, which they consider abusive.

For example, they want to limit the amount of tips they must pay to them to 20% and the commission they take from the income they generate to 35%, whereas currently, the latter recover on average 50%. They would also like to prohibit clubs from imposing fines on them, often very heavy and for rather questionable reasons, such as not showing up for work, even when it is for a valid reason, for example sick leave. They received the support of some opposition MPs, however, the Minister of Labor invited them, in the event of a problem, to turn to the New Zealand equivalent of the industrial tribunal. New Zealand strippers are not only waging this fight to defend their profession, but also to defend the rights of all self-employed people, whatever their sector of activity.

Strippers want Hobbit law enforced

This protection could come from a law already in force, called the Hobbit law. EIt dates from 2010, when filming of the film of the same name was about to begin. But faced with the demands of intermittent entertainment workers on their working conditions, Warner, which produced the film, simply threatened to pack up its cameras and shoot its film elsewhere. An ultimatum which pushed the government at the time to urgently modify the Labor Code to clarify that intermittent workers in the entertainment industry are not employees, but self-employed, and that they therefore have no right to conduct collective negotiations , nor to certain benefits, such as paid leave or sick leave.

Fans of the saga will say that this is more the law of Sauron than of the Hobbit, but this blatant injustice was finally corrected five years ago. Indeed, in 2019, this Hobbit law was modified, to specify that despite their self-employed status, intermittent workers could collectively negotiate their working conditions. It’s a privilege that they are currently the only ones to benefit from and that strippers in New Zealand would like to see not only applied to their profession, but also to all other self-employed workers.