Inside Actors’ Equity’s Stripper Union Organizing Effort: “They Are Our Siblings in the Labor Movement”

“Strippers united, will never be divided!”

For months, dancers at North Hollywood’s Star Garden Topless Dive Bar have picketed the Lankershim Blvd. club, claiming that dancers there have experienced retaliatory job terminations, unsafe working conditions and compensation problems. They’ve repeatedly staked out the sidewalk in front of the bar, holding signs, wearing costumes, cheering cars that pass by honking and trying to persuade potential customers not to enter. But on Friday night, their chants began not at the club, but a mile and a half away in North Hollywood at the parking lot of the L.A. office of union Actors’ Equity Association.

Just a few days earlier, on August 17, Actors’ Equity — an over 100-year-old union that primarily bargains on behalf of actors and stage managers in live theater — announced that the organization was partnering with the Star Garden dancers to attempt to unionize the workplace. (A number of those dancers have not worked at Star Garden for the last few months after several protested safety conditions and say they were locked out of the club.) This effort, which the union celebrated with a rally outside their North Hollywood office on Friday, marks the first time that Actors’ Equity has attempted to organize strippers. The union push faces hurdles, but if it is successful, Star Garden dancers would be the only unionized strippers in the U.S., according to Equity. It’s a high-profile stake in the ground in an industry that has recently seen a renewed labor push, but hasn’t established a union since a success at The Lusty Lady Peep Show in San Francisco, which closed in 2013.

Addressing the crowd of supporters on Friday evening — around 40 people showed up at the start of the rally, with that number increasing over the course of the event — Actors’ Equity president Kate Shindle said, “We are ready to support and partner with and welcome the workers of the Star Garden Topless Dive Bar to Equity.” She added, “They work hard, they are entertainers and artists and athletes, and now they are our siblings in the labor movement.”

In the union’s initial announcement that the Star Garden dancers had filed a petition for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board, Actors’ Equity emphasized the similarities between the issues Star Garden dancers are raising — including alleged compensation, health and safety issues — and those that current union members face. Following her speech, however, Shindle asserted to The Hollywood Reporter, “The things that we are fighting for in your average play or musical, I don’t want to minimize them, but they sound much easier to conquer than sexual assault as a regular occurrence on the job.” She added, “When workers come to a union like ours and say ‘Can you help protect us from that?’ how could we say no?”

Calls to Star Garden for comment were not answered. When reached by THR, the club’s lawyer Joshua Kaplan said he had no comment. (In a comment to BuzzFeed in July, Kaplan said “all allegations of misconduct” were “maliciously false” and that “we have no further comment save to say we look forward to complete vindication in the proper legal forum.”)

The dancers first approached Actors’ Equity in late June 2022, according to Stefanie Frey, Equity’s director of organizing and mobilization. After listening to their stories of working at the club, Frey says the union found commonalities between some of the alleged issues at the strip club and the theater industry in terms of compensation, alleged discrimination and harassment, safety on stage and allegedly being recorded without consent.

The dancers’ group, meanwhile, wanted to unionize because, after months of protesting on the sidewalk outside the club, “we weren’t making any headway [and] we knew that we didn’t want to go back to the club without the full protections of the union and a union contract,” says Velveeta, one of the dancers (who use their stage names only when talking to the press). The group initially wanted to ally with labor and advocacy group Strippers United to form an independent union, but realized that would be difficult with limited resources, Velveeta says. A mutual contact at Glendale-based law firm Bush Gottlieb, which works with Actors’ Equity, helped put the two groups in touch. “I think we are very determined to keep the ideal of having a stripper-led movement within Actors’ Equity, and Actors’ Equity is going to respect that and bring us, they’ve said, to the highest levels of the union to make sure that we’re the ones steering the ship in our industry,” says Velveeta.

At Friday night’s rally, Strippers United’s president, who identified by the stage name Selena, said in a speech that previously other unions have been “afraid to take on the challenge of unionizing strippers.”

Actors’ Equity, conversely, is projecting optimism about future prospects in the field. The union has previously organized other non-traditional performers, including workers in mock trials, fashion shows and in patient simulations. The dancers at Star Garden fall under the union’s umbrella of live performers, Frey says; Frey and Shindle say they are open to other dancers reaching out to the union, but did not say the union is actively organizing dancers at this point.

Charm, one of the dancers, believes the Actors’ Equity push at Star Garden will ultimately “set a precedent for a complete change in the way that strip clubs are run.” Charm adds, “I think it would be completely unique for us to be in a position where we’re actually sitting at the table negotiating with our employers about what goes on in the club, what we want and what we think is appropriate. That’s not something that’s actually taken into account, really, ever, in a serious way.”

The union is currently focused on organizing the 30 dancers at Star Garden, which includes those who say they have been locked out of the club since March. The goal is to bring about an election quickly, so that the workers can return to their job under an Equity contract, Frey says, which would include language around safety and compensation.

In the meantime, says dancer Lilith, the group wants to escalate their protests “to show our bosses that we still are at full force and to show our strength.”

During the Actors’ Equity rally on Friday, dancers, activists with Strippers United and union organizer and Los Angeles City Council District 13 candidate Hugo Soto-Martinez all delivered speeches, as dancers sold merchandise — tee shirts, pins and Koozies — reading “Stripper Strike NoHo” and “Support your local stripper union.” One dancer and labor organizer, Reagan, led the crowd in a chant of “Strippers and actors, shout it from the rafters!”

Later on in the night, supporters returned once more to the sidewalk in front of Star Garden before the club’s vertical sign stating, “Topless Girls.” Granola bars and water bottles were on offer at first, and later several sizable boxes of pizza arrived, as well as cakes. The night’s protest theme was “couture,” and supporters set up a runway for dancers to strut down in costume.

As many of the dancers have not worked at the club since March, Actors’ Equity may face an uphill battle in organizing the club’s workforce. However, Frey says the workers remain “passionate” and dedicated to the cause of unionization, which gives the union hope.

“We wouldn’t have taken this on if we didn’t believe in this campaign and believe we could win,” Frey says.

Shindle is taking more of a wait-and-see approach: When asked about the likeliness of the union movement’s success, she says, “I wish I knew.” Actors’ Equity, she says, is “going straight to the workers, leveraging their solidarity and momentum and passion, and making the best case we can.”