Exotic Dancers Stage Union Drive

SAN FRANCISCO â€”  Under soft lights and the dazed gazes of a dozen men in darkened booths, Polly (not even close to her real name) undulates wearing a black lace camisole pulled below her breasts, red high heels, a garter belt hooked to black fishnet stockings--and a button from Local 790 of the Service Employees International Union affixed to one garter.

The button is not much bigger than the quarters that her viewers furiously spend to keep their window view unblocked, but it’s hardly regulation attire for dancers at the Lusty Lady peep show. Not that their employer can stop them from wearing the buttons.

“Actually, I’m entitled to do it under the National Labor Relations Act of 1945,” chuckled Polly, a 27-year-old university instructor, peep show dancer and fledgling union organizer.

In an age when unions are losing clout and in a business where employee benefits often amount to the right to not be harassed or beat up by customers, 97 employees of one of this city’s best-known exotic dance shows will begin voting today on whether to go union. Their organizing committee is as scrappy and passionate about the union as any Norma Rae.

Ironically, all agree that the Lusty Lady is one of the better run venues for “sex work,” as they call it, in a city unabashedly open about sex, both recreational and professional.

Strippers at a San Diego club briefly set up an open union shop several years ago. But the fervor of the dancers at Lusty Lady and the public politicking leading up to the union elections today and Friday have gotten a lot of attention here.

Much to the dismay of general manager June Cade, who says she’s already running an employee-sensitive shop.

“Back when I started, there was little or no respect for women who did this work,” said Cade, 60, who has run this North Beach club and another in Seattle for 15 years. “There were a lot of drugs and alcohol around. They were certainly never paid a wage.”

Indeed, an hourly wage--from $11 to $24--and the absence of physical contact with customers distinguish the Lusty Lady from other San Francisco sex spots. At most clubs, women work for tips--which can be more lucrative--and lap dancing ends up with the customer touching, if not fondling, the dancer.

Cade frets that a union will destroy the family-type atmosphere. “I thought it was important to have a sex positive environment,” she said. “In some clubs, especially clubs run by men, the women are looked down upon.

“I’ve had people come up to me and say ‘This is the best place I’ve worked.’ Not the best place I’ve worked in the sex industry--’the best place I’ve worked.’ ”

Union representatives and the union-organizing dancers are unmoved.

“If she really wanted to show a family environment, why didn’t she recognize the union?” said Sanda Steinbauer, a Local 790 union official, who notes that Cade had the option of agreeing to the union rather than insisting on a vote.

Pro-union dancers say the homey atmosphere falls by the wayside when there are no guaranteed hours (everyone is part-time) and no sick leave. Dancers tell stories of being compelled to work still suffering from strep throats and the effects of miscarriages or surgeries.

Before the club’s 79 dancers began organizing, three booths had one-way glass. Dancers complained that some hidden customers were videotaping them, the camera’s telltale red light visible even through the one-way glass. They worried that their privacy would be compromised--and that the video pictures would be sold or distributed on the Internet without any remuneration. They appealed to Cade.

“We had been complaining vocally for months,” said a dancer who calls herself Jane. “ ‘Can you put in a metal detector? Can you take out the one-way windows?’ She said no way.’ ”

But almost immediately after the dancers presented Cade with a petition to unionize, the manager removed the one-way windows and instituted sick leave.

“The family metaphor is definitely something I believe,” Jane said, “but I would say she is the parent and she’s treating us like the children.”

Jane, 25, a preschool teacher in her clothed life, has danced at the club for a year and a half and is deeply involved in the union activities. Dark-haired and slender, she epitomizes the peep show’s hiring criteria of the girl-next-door collegiate look.

She rides a bike to work and shares a small apartment with her 25-year-old boyfriend. He saw her dance once, but says, “I only had one quarter.”

That would have bought him 20 seconds of peeping in the Lusty Lady’s booths, which are as claustrophobic as a closet and as dark as a confessional.

What you see are four dancers on a stage sauntering for customers behind a dozen windows, sometimes assuming poses more common on the pages of Hustler magazine than the stages of Broadway. They are naked save for an accessory or two--a chain belt, a camisole, high heels. “I could never have done this right out of college,” said Polly, who once worked at a respectable but low-paying job in publishing. “But when I got out into the work force, it seemed that instead of being exploited for my mind, I could be exploited for my body at twice the money.”

She says the dancers operate on two levels--amusing each other and titillating the customer at the same time. “We’ll go up to a window and say something that will be read by him as a come-on and heard by everyone else on stage as a mockery,” Polly said.

Naomi, 24 and a union supporter, said she doesn’t want to be treated as a sexual object when she walks down the street. “But in there it’s OK to be an object of someone’s desire,” she said. “Actually I think it’s fun. It’s kind of a spiritual relief to come here and dance with other women . . . and have men looking at me.”

Despite all the talk about how respectable the work is, Cade won’t reveal the owners of the business and the dancers won’t reveal their real names for the record. They hide their jobs from students, families and other employers.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Jane said. “Just because I don’t want to use my name doesn’t mean I’m ashamed of this. I think it’s a service. . . . If we closed down, there would be a lot of stressed-out, tense corporate guys.”