‘Gruelling nights, weight monitoring, injuries’: Spotlight on SA strippers’ work safety
Strippers ‘falling from poles’ or seeing dance chairs ‘urinated on’ are winning new nation-leading protections as authorities crack down on Adelaide clubs. One former stripper reveals the hazards facing local workers.
For about 400 workers in SA, six-to-eight-inch heels are the uniform, and the job site can include being weighed, dancing on poorly installed poles, and changing in unhygienic conditions.
These were some of the working conditions InDaily heard are being common in the legal live adult entertainment industry, which for the first time has been highlighted in new guidelines to promote work health and safety rights.
A South Australia Stripper Hub (SASH) representative, who chose to remain anonymous, told InDaily nights working as a stripper can be “gruelling”.
“There are people that have fallen off the stage and landed on their back falling from a pole that’s come out of the roof,” she said.
She said the group heard of one case where strippers entered a change room and sat on a chair, only to find “management has put it into the change room because a customer has urinated on it”.
“It’s a sort of disregard for the safety of workers to put a hazardous material into a room where these dancers are going to sit down and relax or swap out and get ready for stage,” she said.
“Everyone’s definitely horrified when it happens and is grossed out.”
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But she said the longer-lasting harm is the psychosocial damage: “having weight monitored, getting measured, getting taken off the roster if they consider you too large, gruelling nights”.
“There’s definitely assaults that have happened,” she said.
The new SafeWork guidelines and factsheets targeted at the industry outline hazards like these and how to seek help about conditions, discrimination, fair pay and superannuation.
Copies are available online and have been distributed to workers and venue operators, with venues subject to future audits to make sure they are compliant.
The SASH representative said the group hoped the guides – which were specific to adult entertainment, including images – would make knowledge accessible and encourage workers to reject subpar working conditions.
“There’s a real benefit to seeing yourself represented somewhere,” she said.
“It’s about the protection of all workers seeing that and seeing it in SafeWork, the images of dancers, brings that forward.
“We all complain to each other and acknowledge that it’s not good and it doesn’t feel right but ultimately, before I started doing SASH things, it felt like there was no avenue to really take that any further.
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“You’re kind of just like, ‘oh, well, I guess this is what I should expect, because this is the job I’ve chosen to do’.
“When we started SASH, even before that, when we were looking for help, we were trying to Google things and find out what we can do and just not seeing ourselves mentioned anywhere or represented anywhere.”
The South Australia Stripper Hub (SASH) was created in 2021 to take a stand against exploitative workplace culture, after a dancer took action against The Firm in the South Australian Employment Tribunal. The matter was settled out of court.
There are about 10 adult entertainment venues in SA, with some offering off-site agency work.
SafeWork SA Executive Director Glenn Farrell said it would also do compliance audits to check whether venue operators are complying with their work health and safety responsibilities and “take action where necessary”.
“SafeWork SA will work with operators to educate them on their obligations to their workers, which includes contractors and any other persons engaged to undertake work at their venues,” Farrell said.
Industrial Relations Minister Kyam Maher said the guidelines clearly explain club operators’ responsibilities.
“Performers in the adult entertainment industry are entitled to work in an environment that is hazard free – just like any other worker,” he said.
“Venue operators have a legal obligation to ensure their sites are safe and that workers can return home unharmed at the end of their shift.”
The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance – the union that covers strippers and adult entertainment workers – said the guidelines are “practical framework to lift standards across the industry”.
“This is a win for fairness and respect for our highly skilled and professional performers in an enduring part of the entertainment industry,” MEAA Equity Director Ash Rose said.
