The revived debate over workplace standards in Washington strip clubs

Bree Lemasters started dancing in Oregon’s strip clubs as an 18-year-old. For six months, she said, other strippers helped her set up lap dances and learn the ropes.

A decade later, she moved to Seattle to get sober. She started stripping again last month to pay the bills and support her 8-year-old daughter while studying for a master’s degree in clinical mental health at Seattle University. She had heard about how different Seattle and Portland’s strip clubs were, but her first day working in Seattle still surprised her.

“The sense of desperation is palpable in Seattle. The anxiety to make rent that night has created a toxic culture,” Lemasters said during a public hearing at the state Legislature last week, referring to “rent” payments dancers make to clubs where they work.

Lemasters is a member of Strippers are Workers, a coalition of more than 300 former and current dancers leading an effort to update workplace practices in Washington strip clubs. The group is pushing House Bill 2036, which would mandate security staffing, restrict clubs from charging dancers excessive fees and require them to provide strippers with training on de-escalating situations with problem customers and preventing sex trafficking.

The bill would also ban local governments from enforcing laws about distance between strippers and their customers as long as there is no sexual contact. Dancers say local ordinances keeping them away from their customers is stigmatizing and make it harder to work.

“We are the dancers working in and organizing in these clubs knowing what needs to change,” Madison Zack-Wu, who heads Strippers are Workers, told lawmakers last week. “We’re asking that you stand with us and make our workplaces safer.”

Left out of the legislation is a controversial proposal to allow alcohol sales in strip clubs. Dancers say this would relieve financial pressure they face from the clubs. But some lawmakers are wary of the idea. And similar legislation last year that would have allowed clubs to obtain liquor licenses died in a House committee.

Much of what the legislation is trying to achieve is already happening in Oregon. There, a thriving strip club industry exists and the state’s constitution protects nude dancing as a form of speech.

“A community in Portland was made possible because dancers have choice in how they work and make their money,” Lemasters said. “In Washington, survival is the only option.”

Stripping in Washington

There are approximately 11 strip clubs in Washington, according to a 2020 state report.

In Washington’s clubs, where alcohol is banned, dancers are the only source of revenue and clubs often charge them a fee to work. This means strippers who don’t make enough during a shift to pay the club’s “house fee” could leave work owing the club money.

Entertainers report these fees can range from $65 to $165 a day, with an average fee of more than $100 a day. This is higher than nearly every state in the country, Zack-Wu said. Stage fees in Oregon due to market competition are as low as $5 a day.

During testimony, members of The Cupcake Girls, a group of sex trafficking survivors, said the legislation would reduce exploitation and make a safer working environment where trafficking can be more easily identified. Dozens of former and current strippers also spoke about how much safer they felt in Oregon, where alcohol in strip clubs is legal.

Gabriella Reeve, a therapist and social worker who danced to support her then-3-year-old child with autism and significant support needs, said she was charged $120 per shift. She was charged even if she called out sick, she said.

“On the days I only made $50 I would hope that the employee checking me out liked me. Then maybe I would get to take home $25 and still owe the club. If not, I would take home nothing and still owe the club,” Reeve said.

Reeve said her dancing career had benefits. She enjoyed the work and it allowed her to choose her schedule, which was important when it came to supporting her son, she said. But if she were to dance again, she wouldn’t do it in Washington. She’d go to Oregon, she told lawmakers.

Strippers also told lawmakers that club policies often seemed inconsistent and discriminatory. Kasey Champion, a former dancer who is now a professor of computer science at the University of Washington, said club managers would charge different fees to different dancers, depending on their skin color. As a white dancer, she said she was given flexibility denied to dancers of color.

“HB 2036 applies a consistent and accountable contract between dancers and club owners so that all dancers are afforded the opportunity that frankly showed my family the American Dream,” Champion said.

Legalizing liquor?

In 2019, Strippers are Workers helped pass the Dancer Safety and Security bill, mandating panic buttons, customer blacklists and a dancer-led advisory committee convened by the Department of Labor and Industries.

The advisory committee’s 2020 recommendations are all included in HB 2036, except for legalizing liquor in Washington’s clubs.

Some House lawmakers – as well as a few anti-trafficking groups – were skeptical dancers would be safer if customers could drink.

“Putting alcohol into the clubs to make it safer is not a logical or wise decision,” said Robin Miller, a member of the Sex Trade Survivor Caucus.

Miller also said Oregon clubs aren’t any safer. She was trafficked into the commercial sex trade from a Portland club decades ago, she said.

“I serve children who are trafficked in our clubs in Portland. I know people who have died at clubs in Portland. I know that there are countless shootings at our clubs in Portland,” she said.

But Zack-Wu still believes legalizing alcohol is an important part of stripper safety. Legalizing alcohol in clubs will mean “less unregulated drinking and more agency oversight,” she wrote in a Standard opinion editorial. And she and others point out that patrons often drink before they arrive at clubs anyway or leave to drink and then return.

Without the security common in liquor-selling establishments, dancers are often left to fend for themselves against unruly customers, said strippers who testified.

Washington is the only state that does not allow strip clubs to sell alcohol in any form.

This year’s version of the House bill does not include liquor licenses for strip clubs. Zack-Wu said her group wanted to play it as safe as possible to ensure there isn’t a repeat of last year when the legislation collapsed. The Senate version of the bill does include liquor licenses, but lawmakers will have to hash out any differences before approval.

House Speaker Laurie Jinkins, D-Tacoma, said her members will likely be more receptive to passing the legislation without liquor license provisions.

Lemasters suggested that legalizing alcohol will help change the culture of Seattle’s clubs for both strippers and customers.

“In Portland, you can go get your food, you can just hang out. There happens to be strippers all around you … it feels more like an adult Dave and Busters. Here, there’s one purpose … which is to see naked women,” Lemasters said.

That dynamic, she added, can lead to more competition among dancers in Seattle compared to Oregon because there are fewer customers.

“People love strippers. What they hate is strip clubs [in Seattle],” she said. “I think they’re skeeved out by the strip clubs that are here and don’t really want to hang out there.”

For now, though, supporters of this year’s strip club legislation are focused on making sure dancers have basic workplace protections, Zack-Wu said, with the hope that legal liquor sales in clubs will be approved in the future.