L.A. Strippers Win the Fight for a Union

The Takeaway

WNYC and PRX

Politics, Wnyc, Daily News, Radio, Takeaway, National, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 716 Ratings

🗓️ 17 May 2023

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A group of dancers working at the Star Garden Topless Dive Bar in North Hollywood, Los Angeles, just won their battle to form the only current union for strippers in the country. Since being locked out on the job in March 2022, the dancers held a strike and picket for eight months before officially voting to unionize with Actors' Equity in November. But club management challenged the vote, prompting the National Labor Relations Board to set a hearing for May 15, 2023. Yet over this past weekend, the owners agreed to come to the table and recognize the union vote — handing the dancers a historic victory. We speak with Reagan, a dancer and union organizer with the Star Garden Topless Dive Bar dancers, about the months leading up to this moment and what's next for the new union. Click here to listen to our previous conversation with Reagan in August 2022.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Lulu here, whether we are romping through science, music, politics, technology, or feelings,
0:05.9	we seek to leave you seeing the world anew. Radio Lab adventures right on the edge of what we think
0:11.9	we know wherever you get podcasts. It's the takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. Glad to have you with us today. Last August, we brought you the story of strippers on strike. And since then, things have only heated up.
0:36.4	In March of 2022, dancers at the Star Garden Topless Dive Bar in Los Angeles delivered a petition to management.
0:44.3	They alleged that the club's security guards failed to protect them from customers who crossed boundaries,
0:50.3	and that three dancers who complained were fired in retaliation. When the dancers
0:56.2	next came to work, they all found themselves locked out. But they kept dancing, this time on the
1:06.4	picket line. All the dancers were locked out on the sidewalk on Saturday night, and that was the first day
1:12.2	that we started protesting. My name is Reagan. I'm a dancer at Star Garden, the topless dive bar in
1:19.4	North Hollywood, and a union organizer. The takeaway spoke with Reagan back in August.
1:27.6	After the dancers formally filed a petition to hold a union election and become affiliated
1:32.7	with the Actors Equity Association.
1:35.1	Our unionization here will inform dancers all across the country to follow suit and this
1:39.6	industry will see the complete overhaul it so desperately needs by sex workers for sex workers.
1:47.0	In November of 2022, they held the vote, aiming to become the only strippers union in the country.
1:56.0	But club management threw us to leto into those plans. They challenged the eligibility of most of the votes.
2:04.1	And the National Labor Relations Board set a hearing for May 15th to determine the fate
2:09.4	of the would-be union.
2:11.3	But then, this past weekend came a twist.
2:15.2	I'll let Reagan fill us in.
2:17.0	We were poised to go into a hearing with the National Labor Relations Board that was going to determine our union status.
2:27.1	And we were prepared to win, but the club actually offered to come to a settlement agreement,
	...

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