WRITTEN AND PHOTOGRAPHED BY HENRY BROADBENT (HE/HIM)
CW: WORKPLACE ABUSE
Fired Up Stilettos (FUS)—a stripper-led workers collective formed in response to a mass firing at Calendar Girls last year—continues to fight for the rights of adult entertainers in Aotearoa.
Two members of FUS, Laura Phillips and Vixen Temple, addressed the the Education and Workforce Select Committee late last month with a packed chamber of supporters in attendance, including Dame Catherine Healy, former Green MP Jan Logie, and sex-work researcher Dr Lynzi Armstrong.
The presentation was a next step following FUS’s Petition for Strippers Labour Rights. Submitted to Parliament in June last year after collecting over 7000 signatures, the petition requests the House: establish adult entertainers’ right to collective bargaining as independent contractors, outlaw all fines and bonds, and institute a 20% cap on venue cuts of contractor profits.
Temple and Phillips, in their ten-minute submission, carefully and powerfully communicated the current realities of adult entertainers in Aotearoa. They detailed abusive and exploitative employment practices, describing a nationwide pattern of coercion and control, reinforced and informed by negative social stigma.
Both speakers, in illustrating the abuse and manipulation routinely practised by venue managers, stressed that this systemic worker mistreatment is not remotely inherent to adult entertainment. Poor working conditions, Temple emphasised, exist specifically because of “lack of regulation, and … enduring misogynistic ideas.” She drew MPs' attention toward the double-standard in the industry, describing “creative, smart, resourceful, talented, and resilient individuals … subjected to treatment that would be considered barbaric in a male-dominated industry.”
Phillips related to the committee the steadily decreasing share of profits workers have been receiving. Venues continue to ratchet up the percentage they garnish, sometimes taking over half of the cost of a booking. Further, arbitrarily enforced fines and bonds “have doubled” at the same time—increasing the potential for workers to become trapped in economic dependency.
The only purpose of these fines and bonds, Temple underlined, is to “threaten, coerce, and steal workers' money.” Under current settings, workers have no legal recourse to negotiate these conditions, or appeal fines.
Both speakers were, in discussing a possible future for the industry, emphatic on the necessity that any future regulations are “informed by the workers, for the benefit of the workers”, and urged the committee to “commit to effective change now”.
The Ministry for Business and Innovation, in the same session, agreed a ‘gap’ exists in legislation protecting contractors, leaving workers open to exploitation.
FUS and MBIE both identified The Screen Industry Workers Act 2022, which allows film-industry workers to engage in collective bargaining, as a potential model—positing a similar, industry specific allowance for adult entertainment workers.
The select committee will decide on the progress of the petition. No dates for further action have been set.
Fired Up Stilettos will be continuing their campaign. They encourage any strippers having workplace issues to get in contact via social media, or email: firedupstilettos@gmail.com