Speaker 1: Kiota.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. When strippers
Speaker 2: arrive at work, they don't know how much money they're
Speaker 2: taking home at the end of the shift.
Speaker 1: Their employer might.
Speaker 3: Decide to take a higher percentage.
Speaker 2: Of their wages that week, or they could have been
Speaker 2: fined for something inconsequential. With no way of rebutting, they
Speaker 2: can't unionize, negotiate better contract terms, or complain to the
Speaker 2: likes of Work Safe or the Commerce Commission. Fired Up
Speaker 2: Stilettos is an organization and social movement working to improve
Speaker 2: the lives of strippers and sex workers in Altieroa. Today
Speaker 2: on the Front Page, one of the group's organizers, Margo Embargo,
Speaker 2: joins us to discuss the deception.
Speaker 3: Discrimination and stigma these.
Speaker 1: Workers face daily.
Speaker 3: So, Margo, can you tell me about Fired Up Stilettos.
Speaker 1: How did the group form?
Speaker 4: Well, I do remember how we started. It was the
Speaker 4: end of twenty twenty to Calendar Girls. The company had
Speaker 4: decided that they were putting up the prices of the
Speaker 4: services that strippers sell as part of their job. That
Speaker 4: decision was made without the input of the dancers. When
Speaker 4: they released the new prices, it was clear to the
Speaker 4: workers that they'd also increased the percentage of how much
Speaker 4: of our profits that they would take per booking. So
Speaker 4: it had gone from you work, you do a lap dance,
Speaker 4: you keep sixty percent of what the customer pays and
Speaker 4: the club takes forty. That's what it was initially, and
Speaker 4: then they'd redone the pricing and it was fifty to
Speaker 4: fifty was the highest amount that a dancer could make
Speaker 4: from a booking, and then some of the other ones
Speaker 4: were more like forty percent of what the customer were paying,
Speaker 4: and that's really not how contracting should work or how
Speaker 4: stripping should work. So there was a letter written by
Speaker 4: a couple of the dancers at Calendar Girls Wellington and
Speaker 4: it was signed by thirty seven of us who also
Speaker 4: in support of renegotiating that decision. And there were some
Speaker 4: other issues around not receiving accurate records of payment that
Speaker 4: was also addressed in that letter. We gave that to
Speaker 4: the manager at the end of twenty twenty two. Nothing happened.
Speaker 4: I think she responded and said, you know, it was
Speaker 4: a very long message basically being like, don't ask for
Speaker 4: this and then we never had any change or movement
Speaker 4: on that. So it got sent to the owner of
Speaker 4: Calendar Girls on the thirtieth of January last year, and
Speaker 4: then I think no less than twelve hours later, half
Speaker 4: of the people that signed the letter were fired in
Speaker 4: a Facebook post in the Wellington Calendar Girls group page.
Speaker 4: And that was that really, and then the nineteen of
Speaker 4: us that were fired got together after that and we
Speaker 4: were outraged and a lot of people really upset as well,
Speaker 4: obviously like suddenly losing new job. Then we started a
Speaker 4: movement and we're still doing it. Really, that's the story.
Speaker 2: So that forty to fifty sometimes sixty percent of your
Speaker 2: wages is that just for the privilege of being able
Speaker 2: to work there.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Basically, the general idea of how our industry works is
Speaker 4: that the club operates the venue. They own the business
Speaker 4: that you would work under as a stripper. If you're
Speaker 4: in that venue, but they don't own you, you're not
Speaker 4: working for the interests of their business. They own the club,
Speaker 4: and they operate the bar, and they have responsible for security,
Speaker 4: and they have a stage and you know, all the
Speaker 4: things that you need as a stripper, and so really
Speaker 4: it should be like the stripper is contracting the club.
Speaker 4: You know, I need this, like we need to work
Speaker 4: together in order for either of our businesses to succeed.
Speaker 4: So that's where that like tracting deal comes in. But
Speaker 4: how the clubs view it is really that they have
Speaker 4: a club and everyone who works in that club is
Speaker 4: theirs basically to boss around as they please. But really
Speaker 4: what that cut should represent is the strippers money that
Speaker 4: they're paying towards the club for working there, for having security,
Speaker 4: for having a good bar, for having a nice venue
Speaker 4: that customers want to go to. That's what that cut
Speaker 4: should be paying for. It shouldn't just be like for
Speaker 4: no reason.
Speaker 3: So you've presented a petition to Parliament.
Speaker 1: What are you calling for?
Speaker 4: We are calling for the outlaw of fines and bonds,
Speaker 4: a nationwide maximum that have been you can take from
Speaker 4: a contractor's profits, and for adult entertainment workers to be
Speaker 4: legally allowed to collectively bargain.
Speaker 5: We need to continue this conversation, hopefully right across the
Speaker 5: sex industry in this example, and with the support of
Speaker 5: quite a few unions who are backing them in this,
Speaker 5: to work out what is the legislative solution. And I
Speaker 5: really want the Minister to recognize that this is urgent
Speaker 5: and really important. It's about safety as well as fairness.
Speaker 5: People are just trying to pay their bills and they
Speaker 5: shouldn't be made unsafe and have their wages driven down
Speaker 5: because of that imbalance amount.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So when you say fines, what could entertainers be actually
Speaker 2: fined for? Because this is quite unique to the industry. A.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we haven't come across any other workplaces that deal
Speaker 4: with fines. It really depends on the club you work for.
Speaker 4: They've all got different fines lists, and there are a
Speaker 4: couple that don't have them, but that's not the normal.
Speaker 4: The most egregious ones that we have on file are
Speaker 4: from the Calendar Girls twenty twenty three contract. When you
Speaker 4: find it the worst one on that list, I think
Speaker 4: the one that we tend to your attention to the
Speaker 4: most is the five hundred dollars for rudeness to management
Speaker 4: plus four feitzure of fifty percent of your tips. And
Speaker 4: there's no criteria of what rudeness is or it looks like,
Speaker 4: or when it's reasonable versus unreasonable. But the other big
Speaker 4: problem with the finding system is that there's no recourse.
Speaker 4: You know, you can't go and be like, no, that
Speaker 4: didn't happen, or this is my side of the story.
Speaker 4: How it happens is instead of picking up your full
Speaker 4: pay on Thursday or whatever day, you pick up your
Speaker 4: pay and will be missing a few hundred dollars and
Speaker 4: when you ask why, you'll be told that you've got
Speaker 4: to find for something. And there are plenty of testimonies
Speaker 4: of people who have been fined and then like they're
Speaker 4: just the reason is not really there at all, but
Speaker 4: there's no way to address it.
Speaker 2: It seems wild to me that this has been going
Speaker 2: on for so long, especially the fines. I mean, I
Speaker 2: can't imagine it'd be ignored if it were a bunch
Speaker 2: of trade's or something, or contractors on a work site. Hey,
Speaker 2: if they're five minutes late, they'll fined one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty dollars.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you wouldn't imagine. So I don't know. I've never
Speaker 4: worked as a tradee on a work site, but I
Speaker 4: know that.
Speaker 2: But I'm just assuming that nothing, that it'd be fixed tomorrow.
Speaker 2: I mean, why can't this change? What if the government
Speaker 2: officials said.
Speaker 4: They've pretty much all said that they don't have capacity
Speaker 4: to take on the things that we've reported so far,
Speaker 4: and there's not really been any recommendations as to what
Speaker 4: we actually could do without any kind of legislation change.
Speaker 4: The most positive feedback from any of these Select Committee
Speaker 4: hearings that we've had about our petition has been the
Speaker 4: Commerce Commission suggesting that if individual contractors were able to
Speaker 4: challenge a contract term as being unfair, then that would
Speaker 4: relieve pressure on the Commerce Commission and be better for individuals.
Speaker 4: That wouldn't solve our problem at all. I mean, it
Speaker 4: would mean that individuals could challenge fair contract terms, but
Speaker 4: then we still have all the other barriers to accessing
Speaker 4: support in the first place that we would still be
Speaker 4: dealing with. So it's more like that would get us
Speaker 4: an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff where we
Speaker 4: don't have one, but it wouldn't be protecting anyone from
Speaker 4: experiencing harm. And other than that, there's been there's actually
Speaker 4: been no suggestions, So that's I don't know what they're
Speaker 4: thinking because they haven't said like anything that sounds positive
Speaker 4: or like we would solve a problem.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it's interesting how the whole contracting and not
Speaker 2: being able to unionize as a contractor, that's something called
Speaker 2: cartel bargaining.
Speaker 1: Yes, what is that used for?
Speaker 4: It's like an anti competition thing between I guess between
Speaker 4: any business. Is what it's supposed to be used for,
Speaker 4: to stop like all the plumbers from price fixing, so
Speaker 4: that no one in one location can afford a plumber anymore.
Speaker 4: I think like it's kind of the idea of it,
Speaker 4: but that doesn't apply to us at all, because we
Speaker 4: already have such a huge power imbalance between us as
Speaker 4: a workforce of strippers in a club versus the owner
Speaker 4: of the club, that we we need to be able
Speaker 4: to collectively bargain because there's no way to individually do anything.
Speaker 2: I remember in October representatives from the Commerce Commission front
Speaker 2: of the Education and Workforce Committee, and this stuck out
Speaker 2: to me. They said, we were concerned we would put
Speaker 2: considerable time and effort into this matter without necessarily having
Speaker 2: a good and widespread impact across the sector. Now, to me,
Speaker 2: that translates to something like reluctance to do anything because
Speaker 2: it's a bit hard and it doesn't affect as many.
Speaker 1: People as they lie. You're probably used to responses like
Speaker 1: this one.
Speaker 4: Hey, is it frustrating, Yeah, it's really frustrating, But I
Speaker 4: was just reading the response from the Commerce Commission saying
Speaker 4: saying that it's just like, what more do we have
Speaker 4: to do in order to get any kind of help
Speaker 4: from people who make laws on this, you know, like
Speaker 4: or people who are supposed to enforce safe workplaces or
Speaker 4: supposed to protect people who work anywhere. You know, so
Speaker 4: many of our problems come from experiencing stigma and from
Speaker 4: being women as well in female dominated workplaces that are
Speaker 4: often owned by men. And these are all issues that
Speaker 4: we did not create. We did not create stigma or ourselves.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Fired up Stilettos also speaks of the stigma surrounding the industry,
Speaker 2: which I think is really important, and it impedes workers'
Speaker 2: access to justice as well. You've written adult entertainment workers
Speaker 2: suffer prejudice and discrimination within institutions including work Safe, the
Speaker 2: Criminal Court, Commerce Commission, the Employment Relations Authority, and the
Speaker 2: Disputes Tribunal basically everyone.
Speaker 4: Stigma has like a profound impact not just on the
Speaker 4: way society views you and you know, the kind of
Speaker 4: barriers you're going to run into if people are viewing
Speaker 4: through a stigmatized lens, but also on the way that
Speaker 4: you view yourself, Like for example, when I started stripping
Speaker 4: and I did actually tell my parents about it, and
Speaker 4: then I had I got into this mindset of having
Speaker 4: to defend the job and defend the club. So then
Speaker 4: when I was at work and I was like thinking,
Speaker 4: we don't have enough rights. Maybe this isn't how a
Speaker 4: workplace should be, YadA, YadA. It's much harder to have
Speaker 4: those thoughts and then do anything about them because you've
Speaker 4: already backed yourself into a corner in a way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and I told you so treatment yeah.
Speaker 4: Exactly, or even recognizing that you deserve rights because so
Speaker 4: many of us are told you know, what, did you expect?
Speaker 4: Get a different job if you don't like it.
Speaker 1: Let's use work Safe as an example.
Speaker 2: So what reasons were given by them when it declined
Speaker 2: to intervene or even assign an inspector following a complaint
Speaker 2: about uneven floor surfaces, black mold, unsanitary toilets and showers,
Speaker 2: and a lack of security.
Speaker 4: They said it is unlikely to meet the threshold to
Speaker 4: trigger an investigation. This is because work safe has finite
Speaker 4: investigation resources which we deploy towards investigating fatal and serious harm.
Speaker 4: I think there is a real idea among the institutions
Speaker 4: that what we're experiencing isn't serious harm, and that is
Speaker 4: quite hard to combat. Like there are a lot of
Speaker 4: people who leave the industry and just immediately get on
Speaker 4: like an ACC benefit for trauma, and that is also
Speaker 4: having impacts on the state obviously if they're being paid
Speaker 4: by ACC. So I like, it's in everyone's best interests
Speaker 4: to help us address the harm that we're experiencing.
Speaker 2: And it's not many workplaces where you go in and
Speaker 2: have a real fear of being sexually assaulted as well.
Speaker 4: No, And I mean, and that's the other thing is
Speaker 4: they put a lot of emphasis on that, and of
Speaker 4: course it is a risk. It's a risk anywhere, and
Speaker 4: it can be more of a resk depending on the
Speaker 4: mindset of the patrons that come in, and you don't
Speaker 4: know who that's going to be, just like you don't
Speaker 4: need any other business. But that risk should be it
Speaker 4: should be more mitigated than in real life because of
Speaker 4: the presence of security and staff who are attentive and
Speaker 4: know what to do. Like, all of those things should
Speaker 4: be happening, and I'm not saying that they do happen,
Speaker 4: but there is opportunity for that to be actually a
Speaker 4: really safe space. But the spaces are being made unsafe
Speaker 4: predominantly by the people who run them, not by the customers.
Speaker 6: We have laws in this country that supposedly protect against trafficking,
Speaker 6: but what about our own citizens who are working off
Speaker 6: manipulated depth and venues because there is no effective way
Speaker 6: to challenge it. The current profit share has some workers
Speaker 6: in our industry leaving in depth mentally unwill, physically exhausted,
Speaker 6: and results in benefit dependency if this committee does not
Speaker 6: commit to an effective change now, like so many of
Speaker 6: our club managers have told us, every day and your
Speaker 6: girl turns out, and this is what they will be
Speaker 6: walking into.
Speaker 2: In terms of So we've spoken about collective baggining and
Speaker 2: outlawing fines, Yeah, what about setting a maximum that venues
Speaker 2: can take.
Speaker 4: This is an interesting one because I think people generally
Speaker 4: hear it as within the contractor space, as being like,
Speaker 4: how could you possibly you know? Like that doesn't interest
Speaker 4: of all parties, blah blah blah, And that's all well
Speaker 4: and good, but people need to remember that we do
Speaker 4: not work for the interests of these businesses. We work
Speaker 4: with them, but we are our own business, our own
Speaker 4: contractors deciding how we work when we work, ideally, deciding
Speaker 4: how we work when we work, what services we're willing
Speaker 4: to offer, how we want to present ourselves, and we
Speaker 4: can make all of those adjustments with our own business
Speaker 4: interests in mind. But the venues are making at the moment,
Speaker 4: and let's use Calendiles as an example. At Calendile's, at
Speaker 4: the moment, the venues are making fifty percent of every
Speaker 4: thing every working dancer earns in their venue. They're also
Speaker 4: making money from the bar. They're also making money from
Speaker 4: the door fee that they're able to charge because they
Speaker 4: have strippers working in their venue, and the strippers don't
Speaker 4: see any of the profits from the bar, or the
Speaker 4: profits from the door sales or any of that stuff.
Speaker 4: The idea that the club should be taking fifty percent
Speaker 4: of a stripper's income is just absurd.
Speaker 2: So you guys are saying twenty percent should be the
Speaker 2: absolute maximum. And that's for things like you said before, security,
Speaker 2: the bar, the venue, the promotion, et cetera.
Speaker 4: Working in a well maintained venue.
Speaker 3: Yes, so strippers are contractors.
Speaker 2: People suggest to get around the whole collective bargaining thing
Speaker 2: to become employees instead of contractors, Can you explain to
Speaker 2: me why that probably isn't the best option.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So there's a few reasons. The most important one,
Speaker 4: I suppose, or the one at the forefront, is that
Speaker 4: for our job to be safe, because it is like,
Speaker 4: it's not always sexual job, but it definitely can be
Speaker 4: like a sexually natured job. In order for that to
Speaker 4: be safe, you need to be able to withdraw your
Speaker 4: concenter anytime and change your mind. And so any idea
Speaker 4: that the club could be controlling or managing or dictating
Speaker 4: what workers are doing is really unsafe. And that's already
Speaker 4: the problem that we're dealing with. So we kind of
Speaker 4: feel that to make us employees would be to put
Speaker 4: us in a closer relationship with the venues. We would be,
Speaker 4: in that case directly working for the interests of that business,
Speaker 4: not for ourselves, And we don't want that. We don't
Speaker 4: want to be close with them. We just want them
Speaker 4: to not be able to control us into behaving like
Speaker 4: employees when we're actually independent contractors.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And then being an employee would then mean that
Speaker 2: you have to book holidays off and etc.
Speaker 1: And put that trust in your employer.
Speaker 2: More So, how has the industry responded to your petition
Speaker 2: really positively.
Speaker 4: We've had a lot of support from dancers all across
Speaker 4: the country and.
Speaker 1: Even overseas as well.
Speaker 4: Hey yeah, yeah, overseas as well. So it's really interesting
Speaker 4: because there's a lot of stripper based I don't know, activism,
Speaker 4: labor rights movements happening across the world, and it's hard.
Speaker 4: We don't exactly work together on our plans because we
Speaker 4: all work in different labor rights context everyone has different laws,
Speaker 4: et cetera. But it's really amazing to interact with them
Speaker 4: and realize that all the things that you're like that
Speaker 4: you've realized everything is so harmful, and all of the
Speaker 4: systems that are upholding each other in certain ways and
Speaker 4: all it starts to feel a bit like your conspiracy
Speaker 4: theory when you first like get fired and sit down
Speaker 4: and be like damn, like this is actually really bad
Speaker 4: and really harmful, and you feel a bit crazy, especially
Speaker 4: because the clubs has been telling you you're crazy for
Speaker 4: however long. And then you talk to people overseas and
Speaker 4: they are coming to the same conclusions about the same problems,
Speaker 4: and you're like, oh, damn, okay, cool, this is this
Speaker 4: is happening everywhere this is not We're not insane.
Speaker 2: And so the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, Andrew Bailey,
Speaker 2: has indicated he's open to a review of the Fair
Speaker 2: Trading Act. Offer told me the Minister intends to review
Speaker 2: the Fair Trading Act next year.
Speaker 1: Do you reckon that's a positive sign?
Speaker 4: I suppose if the Communist Commission's concern is that they
Speaker 4: don't have the capacity to take on all cases for
Speaker 4: unfair contract terms, it is only reasonable that individuals are
Speaker 4: able to do that for themselves. But it will not
Speaker 4: solve our widest strip club problem. That one change will.
Speaker 4: It will offer another avenue to us, which is cool
Speaker 4: because we don't have very many. But at the same time,
Speaker 4: the ones that we do have don't usually deliver results.
Speaker 4: So I can't say whether or not that's positive.
Speaker 2: And what are you hoping for when the Fair Trading
Speaker 2: Act is reviewed next year? Obviously the end of fines,
Speaker 2: but also collective bargaining and of course the twenty percent
Speaker 2: maximum take right.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, I would hope that all the things that
Speaker 4: we have put in our possession would be delivered on
Speaker 4: because those are the things that we've assessed are necessary
Speaker 4: our industry to be safe.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, Margo.
Speaker 4: No worries, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
Speaker 2: can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
Speaker 2: at enzdhrald dot co dot nz. The Front Page is
Speaker 2: produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also
Speaker 2: our sound engineer.
Speaker 1: I'm Chelsea Daniels.
Speaker 2: Subscribe to the Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you
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Speaker 2: look behind the headlines.