If you ask any of the girls working down at Melbourne strip joint Spearmint Rhino how they feel about getting paid to wave their pink bits at people, most will tell you they're getting a pretty sweet deal, despite what may seem like unfair conditions. If we don't show up for a shift and don't give notice, we get fined. Sometimes they give us money just to sit with them and stuff.
They all have similar rules, including patrons not being allowed to touch dancers. Rules on dancers touching punters vary widely around the world, but in Melbourne it is verboten. Once you get outside Melbourne, you find some dancers don't have it nearly so good. The rates for private dances can be much lower, and there are often only vague restrictions stopping the girls from getting groped by drooling hillbillies.
Clubs are in a very powerful position. If a performer has a grievance, there are plenty of ladies in line to take her spot. Last time I checked, there was no shortage of tits in Australia. However, there's at least one woman who wants to see change in the industry. The national secretary of the Striptease and United Artists Union, Jeannette Schagen, set up the organisation back in in an attempt to reform and legitimise the industry. Schagen has just sent a log of claims to all the employers in the strip sector demanding standard rates for people taking their clothes off in an "erotic fashion" for money.
The rates they asked for were, on the face of it, laughably high. The media reported this as straight fact. Luckily for the punters it's not as simple as that.
According to Schagen, the union is attempting to set up an award rate and standard conditions for the industry so that workers have a reference point with the clubs.
