We are of course pro-sex work and pro-sex positivity here at Cohost Union News, so I'm delighted to report this piece fresh off the wire: there should soon be, for the first time since 2013, a stripper's union in the United States. After months of legal disputes Star Garden Topless Dive Bar—a North Hollywood bar which is exactly what it says it is—has apparently decided to recognize its strippers and their unionization effort. The stripper's union will be affiliated with the Actor’s Equity Association, which is under the AFL-CIO's banner. They also seem to be affiliated with nonprofit Strippers United.
Reportedly the unionization effort began last February when Reagan, a stripper at the bar, was fired for going to management with safety concerns. Another unnamed stripper at the bar was fired that week for preventing a customer from filming, which is not allowed in the establishment; after this occurred the strippers were required to report incidents to management and not on-site security, even though management was often absentee at Star Garden.
These incidents back-to-back and the new rule enraged the other strippers at the bar. When they petitioned for Reagan and the other fired colleague to be returned and for the no-photography rule to be seriously enforced, management locked all of them—18 strippers in total, from what I can tell—out of the club. They subsequently began a series of regular pickets against the bar that have continued up until this week, when this news dropped. Those pickets were, incidentally, supported by former employees of the Lusty Lady, a now-closed club in San Francisco that formed the last stripper's union in the United States.
An NLRB election at Star Garden also happened in November of last year, but that election had been in limbo until today for a variety of reasons. Most immediately was the validity of the election in the first place: Star Garden challenged 16 of the 17 ballots cast on the grounds that the strippers were not employees. The law firm the bar hired to dispute the election was quoted by CNN as follows:
“Most of the purportedly eligible voters have never been employees of Star Garden; they were in fact, and in law, merely lessees with no employment relationship. We will reserve our full arguments for the appropriate forum, but we remain confident that our client will prevail.
Another complication in that election appears to be Star Garden's financial state. It has actually been closed in recent months, seemingly due to a bankruptcy proceeding its owners are going through. But it now seems that—as part of a legal settlement—the bar is dropping all of its objections to the ballots, will recognize the union voluntarily, and is seeking to reopen in the next few weeks and months. Dismissed workers from last year like Reagan will be returning to the bar as well under the settlement.