Projects

Overview

The Strippers Are Workers campaign was launched in 2018 by a group of dancers who successfully organized to win the first stripper-led law in WA state, HB 1756, which created a “Know Your Rights” training for dancers and gained safety minimums for clubs, such as having panic buttons and customer black-lists. We have represented dancers in the WA state L&I Dancer Advisory Committee, spearheaded the creation of a legislative report to win new rights for workers, helped dancers navigate unemployment and other resources during the pandemic, and created a growing movement of hundreds of dancers in WA to win new rights in the workplace.

Strippers’ bill of Rights

(SB 6105) 2024

SAW passed the first ever Strippers’ Bill of Rights (SB 6105) with Senator Saldaña! We organized and built consensus with hundreds of WA dancers to develop policy that addresses pervasive issues within our own industry and win workers’ rights and protections for dancers.

The Strippers’ Bill of Rights:

  • Legalization of alcohol service in clubs

  • Eliminate back rent practices (indebting dancers to clubs)

  • Regulate high dancer house fees 

  • Mandatory training for club employees

  • Minimum security staffing requirements in clubs

  • Anti-discrimination protections

  • Independent Contractor Affirmative Protections

  • Panic Button requirements

  • Customer Black Lists requirements

  • Decriminalization of nudity and distance to customers while performing

We developed SB 6105 to get our WA industry up to par with the rest of the country and to revolutionize workers’ rights for dancers! With our bill, we are stopping harmful industry practices that utilize power imbalances between clubs and dancers to exploit them for profit and labor. Our bill creates a new revenue source that is not dancers- alcohol- which lowers the cost for dancers to work while funding essential safety and security measures. Dancers deserve to do their work equitably, safely, and without stigmatization.

Check out Strippers’ Bill of Rights FAQ to learn more about what it means for dancers!

The Dancer Safety and security bill

(HB 1756)

In 2018 SAW and Working Washington unanimously passed the first ever Washington dancer-led legislation, for dancers by dancers.

The Bill :

  • Requires strip clubs to install panic buttons in secluded areas, including VIP rooms.

  • Requires strip clubs to record dancers’ reports of violence by customers and to make every effort to identify the customer and keep those records for five years. It is up to individual dancers to decide when or if to report. If a dancer chooses to make a formal statement about a customer behaving violently, the club must place the customer on a blacklist preventing them from returning to the club for at least three years. These lists must be shared among clubs with common ownership.

  • Creates an “adult entertainment advisory committee” to consider additional steps that could be taken to improve safety, health, and security for dancers, as well as provide feedback on how well the regulations in this bill are working. These recommendations will be collected by the Department of Labor & Industries and provided to the legislature if additional legislative action is needed. The advisory committee must be composed of at least 50% dancers who have held a business license in the state of WA for 5 years.

  • Creates a new Know Your Rights training, developed by WA L&I, that dancers take before getting our municipal business license. The training will not add to license fees, and it will be developed with the input of dancers. Areas it covers include:

    -Rights of dancers as independent contractors

    - Information on how to report workplace injuries and abuses, including sexual and physical abuse and sexual harassment

    -The economics of dancing

    - List of resources for assistance on the issues covered in the training

Dancer Survey

We created survey to hear more about dancer’s experiences and opinions stripping, and to gather credible and compelling information to present to legislators in the 2023 legislative session so that we can win the fight to legalize alcohol and get more rights!

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