AVN Hall of Fame performer Alana Evans appeared at rally in downtown San Diego on Thursday, where she spoke in favor of a proposed California state law that would require strippers to give up their “independent contractor” status and be reclassified as “employees” of the clubs where they perform. Evans accompanied the bill’s author, San Diego Democratic Assembly Member Lorena Gonzalez, as they confronted a group of exotic dancers who were protesting in opposition to the bill, as KSWB-TV reported.
Evans’ position on the employee vs. independent contractor bill puts her on the opposite side of the debate from another AVN Hall of Famer, Stormy Daniels, who recently published an op-ed essay in The Los Angeles Times, as AVN.com reported, in which Daniels called “employee status” for strippers “highly undesirable.”
That was also the position taken by protesters in San Diego, who chanted “Strip my clothes, not my rights,” and held placards reading, “Strippers’ rights are human rights.”
“I don’t want to be told what to do, when and where,” said one protester to KSWB. “That’s why I’m an independent contractor, not an employee.”
But Evans told the protesters that the bill was intended to protect them from exploitation by club owners.
"Whether it is on your feet and in your heels or on your back, I have the right just as much as you to be protected," she said at the rally.
“They don’t want to pay worker’s comp. They don’t want to pay into social security. Or if you get hurt, or we need disability, none of those things exist for us as workers,” Evans told the protesters.
The Gonzalez bill would formalize as California law a state Supreme Court decision from last year, which restricted the ability of businesses to classify workers as contractors rather than employees.
The decision affects such businesses as the ride-sharing services Uber and Lyft, which rely on workers who remain independent, but also had a direct impact on strippers, causing an “exodus” of exotic dancers from from clubs in the state, as AVN.com reported. The question of whether strippers are independent contractors or actually employees of the clubs in which they dance has been litigated in various states for at least two decades.
“Disrobing for money is an unconventional way to earn a living, and there are unique aspects of the job that make employee status for the stripper highly undesirable,” Daniels wrote in her Times op-ed. “Employers might require us to give free nude performances for customers we don’t feel comfortable with. These are highly personal decisions and the power to make them should be exclusively in the hands of dancers.”
Photo By Baldwin Saintilus/Wikimedia Commons
