Don't stay at a Hyatt hotel; support your local stripper

Yesterday's Boston Globe reported on how housekeepers at the corporation's three Boston hotels were tricked into training other people as housekeepers (although I'll be many of them suspected), ostensibly to fill in on vacation, but actually to become permanent (?) replacements. Many of them had worked at Hyatt for decades. Now their jobs have been outsourced and they are out of work.

Hyatt likes to ride on its reputation for being responsible partners in their respective communities. Apparently that responsibility doesn't extend to the hotel workers.

Today's Globe reports on a lawsuit by Salisbury strippers to challenge their independent contractor status, claiming they should be treated as employees. Strippers and other workers at gentlemen's clubs often have to pay to perform. Tips are supposed to compensate, but with the economic decline still in full swing--for workers, anyway-- tips just aren't cutting it.

Locally, the Springfield blog formerly titled after the Mardi Gras is now revamped and retitled The Employee Advocate, offering news and advice on the struggles of workers for fair wages and better working conditions.

Some corporations and employers are willing to take somewhat reduced profits in order to provide decent jobs for their workers. Many are not. I've never stayed at a Hyatt hotel and the only time I've been in a strip club was to pass out condoms. But we all need to be informed consumers.

Photo of the Hyatt hotel in Cambridge from Ornoth's photostream at the Flickr Commons.

Live Nude Girls Unite!

A Springfield stripper announced on Masslive today that she's started a blog, MardiGrasClub, to talk about the injustices she sees being perpetrated against the MC employees.

From her second post:

50 dancers a day average $ 50 house fee = $2500 a day
$2500 a day x 7 days a week= $ 17,500
17,500 x 52 weeks a year= $ 910,000.00 per year
So Mardi Gras collects almost a million dollars a year in "house fees" from the Strippers .
That's not enough ? They have to extort $25 from each bartender and $ 200 a day from the dj's.
Clearly none of this is legal. Millions of dollars, all cash stolen from hard working people.

This is the second area blog that I know of about (the catch-all phrase) sex working. Marginalutilities' blog, The Virtues of Vice, brings a high level of consciousness to talking about her work as an escort and life in general.

But the Masked Avenger, the pseudonym our Springfield blogger is using, is focusing for the moment entirely on working conditions, and she's got a rough road ahead of her. Organizing any worker is hard; organizing strippers is harder.

"...at heart it's a movie about work, part of the rich tradition of labor documentaries that includes Barbara Kopple's "Harlan County, U.S.A.," and "American Dream." The idea of a strippers' union may seem farfetched, even laughable at first; the owners of the Lusty Lady and San Francisco's municipal authorities certainly thought so. But Ms. Query's film effectively makes the case that work, whatever you wear or don't wear when you're doing it, is still work.

The only successful campaign I know of became the subject of the documentary, Live Nude Girls Unite!

The dancers at the Lusty Lady have tuition to pay and children to raise, and the claims they make hardly seem extravagant: job security, paid sick days, a safe working environment. Before the organizing drive began, the film asserts, dancers were routinely fired and non- white dancers were routinely discriminated against. (At upscale lap- dancing clubs, working conditions are shown to be worse: the dancers must pay extortionate "stage fees" and work as independent contractors, without the protections afforded regular employees or the possibility of union protection.) New York Times

You can read the organizers' story in their own words at Live Nude Girls Unite.

And good luck, Masked Avenger. Check out the Exotic Dancers Alliance archives for some tips.