May 17, 2005
Naked Injustice
Naked Injustice
12/17/03
San Francisco Bay Guardian
Strippers say club owner greed and lax city oversight are forcing them into prostitution.
By Ann Harrison
AMONG THE MANY unseemly legacies left behind by the outgoing administration at City Hall is the lack of enforcement of labor laws and city codes in San Francisco's strip clubs.
For the past decade, dancers who work in these clubs have complained bitterly to an array of city agencies about alleged labor and safety violations in their workplaces. But under Mayor Willie Brown, the former personal attorney of strip club owner Sam Conti, little was done to enforce state and local laws designed to protect dancers from being exploited.
Mayor-elect Gavin Newsom and district attorney-elect Kamala Harris will need to take a firm stand on enforcing labor rights for exotic dancers – as well as staking out a position on the growing movement to decriminalize prostitution in San Francisco – if the situation is going to change.
"In 1996, when Willie Brown came into office, we were told by the manager of the Market Street Cinema that now that Brown is mayor, they could do whatever they want," said Daisy Anarchy, a dancer who worked at the Market Street Cinema strip club and founded an advocacy group called Sex Workers Organized for Labor, Human and Civil Rights. "At the beginning of 1996, the fees that dancers at the club were charged to work went from an illegal stage fee of $25 for an eight-hour shift to a so-called commission system where dancers had to pay $360 to work an eight-hour shift."
Dancers told the Bay Guardian these fees have led to increased competition and pressure to offer customers more than just a lap dance.http://www.sfbg.com/38/12/news_injustice.html
Posted by ann at 11:20 PM | Comments (0)
Sex workers Demand Legal Protections
AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE
Sunday, December 21, 2003
Ann Harrison
English Wire
San Francisco sex workers demand legal protection
SAN FRANCISCO — San Francisco's prostitutes and strippers are calling on the city's newly elected young mayor to help decriminalize the world's oldest profession and crack down on abuses of exotic dancers.
Dancers charge that the city's outgoing mayor, Willie Brown, the former lawyer of a prominent strip club owner, ignored years of labor law and safety violations in San Francisco's strip clubs.
The California Labor Commissioner has held hearings for a decade in which dancers aired grievances and recovered back pay. But dancers say the abuses continued.
Fed up with non-enforcement of labor laws, dancers have filed two class action lawsuits against the city's strip clubs charging that managers seized their tips, failed to pay them wages, and charged them hundreds of dollars per shift for the privilege of working. http://www.walnet.org/csis/news/usa_2003/afp-031221.html
Posted by ann at 11:16 PM | Comments (0)
Sex Workers On A Mission
Sex Workers On A Mission
San Francisco sex workers are on a mission
to decriminalize prostitution here and across the country.
By Ann Harrison
It seemed like an open and shut case. On Jan. 14, federal agents raided four suspected brothels in San Francisco's Sunset District. Investigators say they busted a sophisticated international prostitution ring in which Asian women were allegedly smuggled into the United States and forced to pay off a $40,000 debt to their traffickers by selling their bodies.
The Standing Against Global Exploitation Project (SAGE), which works closely with local police departments, immediately condemned an underground industry that promises foreigners better lives with good jobs but instead forces them into sex work.
"Human trafficking is a form of modern-day slavery," SAGE's Linnette Peralta Haynes told the Bay Guardian. http://www.sfbg.com/38/18/cover_hookers.html
Posted by ann at 10:57 PM | Comments (0)