SALEM, Ore. — The hazards strippers can face at work are plentiful: broken glass, holes in the stage, injuries, staph infections.
On Wednesday, a group of dancers traveled to Salem to tell a state legislative committee about those risks and others.
They love their jobs, they said, but also find that dancers are often powerless to take action when their rights are violated.
“Performers have adapted to a broken system because they are afraid that government interference would infringe on their income and the amount of control they have over how they earn it,” Paris Hoover, a Portland dancer, told the House Business and Labor Committee.
Hoover and other dancers have been working for months with lobbyists hired by the Oregon chapter of the National Association of Social Workers. They have proposed a bill that would require strip clubs and other live entertainment venues to display a poster outlining the rights of performers. It would include a hotline that performers could call to report problems.
Claude DaCorsi, a club operator and president of the Oregon chapter of the Association of Club Executives, said he supported the bill and was appalled by some of the conditions he heard dancers describe. The problems tend to come from “a couple rotten apples” who tarnish the industry’s reputation, he said.
“That should not be acceptable by any means,” DaCorsi said. “The issues that are raised are extreme and are troubling.”
Strippers generally work as independent contractors rather than employees. They pay a stage fee or a portion of their earnings to the management, bartenders, bouncers, DJs and other support staff.
The contractor status means clubs don’t have to pay payroll taxes, provide health insurance or cover workers’ compensation claims if they’re injured on the job. It also means that dancers can’t be managed like employees because they work for themselves.
The dancers told lawmakers that they enjoy the freedom that comes with being independent contractors and aren’t interested in being classified as traditional employees. But they do want managers to respect the differences.
