'Dream come true' for L.A. dancers who just formed the only strippers' union in the U.S.
Sheena Goodyear | CBC Radio | Posted: May 19, 2023 7:47 PM | Last Updated: May 19, 2023
Star Garden Topless Dive Bar dancers vote 17-0 to join Actors' Equity Association after 15-month battle
Reagan erupted in tears when she learned that she and her fellow strip club dancers had finally formed a union.
After a unanimous vote on Thursday, dancers at the Star Garden Topless Dive Bar in Los Angeles have joined the Actors' Equity Association, making them the only active unionized strippers in the United States. And they're hoping others will follow suit.
"When they finally announced the victory, I was, like, bawling," dancer and union organizer Reagan told As It Happens host Nil Köksal. "Just a sobbing mess."
CBC has agreed to identify Reagan by her stage name to protect her safety.
Lawyers for Star Garden said in a statement that the club "is committed to negotiating in good faith with Actor's Equity a first of its kind collective bargaining agreement which is fair to all parties."
Dancers felt unsafe
The union fight started in March 2022 after security guards at the club "repeatedly failed to protect" dancers from abusive or threatening patron behaviour, and the club's managers fired those who voiced concerns, the Actors' Equity said.
"That was the really galvanizing thing that brought us together," Reagan said. "There was this kind of Wild West sort of attitude towards safety measures."
Reagan says dancers weren't allowed to ask security guards to intervene when customers harassed or threatened them. Instead, they had to take it to management, who would decide whether it met the bar for intervention.
The security guards, similarly, had to get the green light from management to intervene if they spotted rowdy customers at the club.
"There's this very strange situation of a middleman when we're in a small club and there is alcohol at this club, and sometimes patrons are drunk and they're acting disorderly and they're acting out of line," Reagan said.
"It got to a point where it really became intolerable."
Dancer Lilith — also a stage name — told The Associated Press that customers were also allowed to stay in the bar after closing, which made the dancers feel unsafe because patrons could see them dressed "out of our stripper personas" and identify which cars they drove when they went home, she said.
But when Reagan pushed back against this policy, she says she was fired. Another dancer was fired for intervening when she noticed a customer filming a coworker on stage without her consent, Lilith said.
That's when the Star Garden dancers banded together and delivered a petition to management calling for better security conditions and demanding their colleagues get their jobs back.
"What ended up happening was the dancers that signed the petition were locked out of the club, not allowed to come back into work the next day," Reagan said. "That's what spurred the picket line, the strike."
The workers remained on the picket line, she said, for the next eight months.
15-month battle
After getting locked out, the dancers joined forces with Actors' Equity, which filed for a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) guild election on their behalf.
The NLRB conducted the election via mail and planned for a November vote count. But those results were put on hold when Star Garden challenged the eligibility of some voters, and filed for bankruptcy protection.
The union announced this week that the club's management had agreed to a settlement.
"Star Garden decided to settle, as it has always been a fair and equal opportunity employer, that respects the rights of its employees," attorneys Josiah R. Jenkins and An Nguyen Ruda, who represent the club, said in a statement.
The vote count proceeded on Thursday. All 17 dancers who cast ballots voted to unionize.
"Had we known on Day 1 that this was going to be 15 months of our lives and that it was going to be really difficult and not an easy path, I don't know that we would have made those choices," Reagan said.
"And so I'm actually kind of glad for the naiveté that we had, and we just kind of put one foot in front of the other, and then here we are. And it was so worth it, thank God."
As part of Tuesday's settlement, Star Garden agreed to dismiss the bankruptcy filing, reopen the club and offer fired and locked out dancers their jobs back.
"I'm feeling really optimistic about going back," Lilith said. "It will definitely be surreal being back on that specific stage, but I know we're going to have our community rallying around us."
Reagan, too, is looking forward to getting back to work.
"I do plan to go back, first of all, because I think that it's a really beautiful fairy tale ending to be able to walk back in that club as a victorious unionized dancer. That is just such a dream," she said.
"And then also, what's a dream is working in the only unionized strip club in America."
The only — but not the first.
In the late '90s, dancers at San Francisco's Lusty Lady organized the Exotic Dancers Union. But that club was shuttered in 2013.
"I visited that sort of on like a pilgrimage of like, oh wow, what would it be like to work at a unionized strip club? And that was, like, years and years and years ago. So this is really a dream come true for me," Reagan said.
Actors' Equity Association President Kate Shindle says this sets a new precedent for strippers in the U.S.
"I'm not sure that the enormity of what these workers have accomplished has entirely sunk in yet," Shindle said in a statement. "If the Star Garden strippers could do it, despite the massive and unique barriers to organizing within their industry, so can everybody. I'm so, so proud of them."
Reagan, meanwhile, is excited for what comes next.
"I definitely hope that other strippers across the United States are inspired," she said.