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Melissa Harris-Perry: It's The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. Glad to have you with us today. Last August, we brought you the story of strippers on strike, and since then, things have only heated up.

[MUSIC - Nelly: Hot in Herre]

Melissa Harris-Perry: In March of 2022, dancers at the Star Garden Topless Dive Bar in Los Angeles delivered a petition to management. They alleged that the club security guards failed to protect them from customers who crossed boundaries and that three dancers who complained were fired in retaliation. When the dancers next came to work, they all found themselves locked out, but they kept dancing, this time on the picket line.

Reagan: All the dancers were locked out on the sidewalk on Saturday night, and that was the first day that we started protesting. My name is Reagan. I'm a dancer at Star Garden the Topless Dive Bar in North Hollywood and a union organizer.

Melissa Harris-Perry: The Takeaway spoke with Reagan back in August after the dancers formally filed a petition to hold a union election and become affiliated with the Actors' Equity Association.

Speaker 3: Our unionization here will inform dancers all across the country to follow suit, and this industry will see the complete overhaul it so desperately needs by sex workers for sex workers.

[crowd cheering]

Melissa Harris-Perry: In November of 2022, they held the vote aiming to become the only strippers union in the country but club management threw a stiletto into those plans. They challenged the eligibility of most of the votes and the National Labor Relations Board set a hearing for May 15th to determine the fate of the would-be union. But then, this past weekend came a twist. I'll let Reagan fill us in.

Reagan: We were poised to go into a hearing with the National Labor Relations Board that was going to determine our union status. We were prepared to win, but the club actually offered to come to a settlement agreement which actually gave us more than we would have gotten in the hearing; voluntary union recognition, agreements about dancers being hired back to the club, and a lot of big changes that are going to happen at Star Garden to make it the only currently unionized strip club in America.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I spoke with Reagan on Tuesday just before news broke of their victory. It is pretty rare when we do a labor story and I get to just start with, well, congratulations on a win.

Reagan: Thank you. Yes, it feels really huge and it feels like we were due this victory after everything that we went through, but I know that the labor movement often has a lot of struggles and a lot of long, long journeys to victory. The fact that our journey was only 15 months, although that is a long time, it's relatively quick, I think, in terms of the labor movement at large.

Melissa Harris-Perry: 15 months I'm sure you can tell me is no small amount of time when you're talking about the stakes for all of you as dancers. Can you help us to understand the stakes of a more than year-long work stoppage?

Reagan: It definitely was not easy, and it's definitely not what we thought we were embarking on at the beginning. We thought that we were delivering a petition. This was primarily addressing issues that had come up at work that had made a lot of the dancers, the majority of the dancers there, feel unsafe. The petition led to a lockout of the dancers that had signed the petition.

The lockout led to a strike and a picket, and we picketed for eight months until we had our union vote that was scheduled back in November. Then the employer objected to the votes cast and so the vote count was postponed until March. Then there was a whole bankruptcy, the whole bankruptcy situation that now the employer is exiting.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Yes. Let's pause on that for a moment. Talk about the bankruptcy thing. The employer was making a claim that the work stoppage was leading them to bankruptcy. Is that right?

Reagan: I think that the bankruptcy was really a union-busting tactic. They were proposing a reorganization of the business to be a pool hall. That was a way for them to keep the business open but fire all of the dancers and just not have to deal with the union at all. It was ruled that that was unfair and that wasn't how they were going to get out of this. Their bankruptcy case transferred over to Chapter 7 and then they were going to go into liquidation.

Going into liquidation and going into these hearings that we had an extremely strong case against them for the hearing that was coming up, all of that was the pressure cooker that I think made them come to the table and actually sit down at a literal bargaining table that I was privileged to sit at for 12 hours and negotiate a settlement agreement that both sides felt good about. At the end of it, we shook hands, and it was like it was a new day.

Now moving forward, I'm so proud of this campaign. I'm so proud of everyone who has stood in solidarity with us, and I'm so excited that we can lead by example that it's actually possible for good change to happen when you take this route because it's not an easy route.

Melissa Harris-Perry: When do you and the other dancers actually head back to work?

Reagan: In a few months' time. With this agreement that has just been agreed to, there's a 30-day period before contract negotiations, I believe, officially start.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Are there aspects of the system that you feel like you've learned and feel perhaps even more empowered through now?

Reagan: Oh my God, yes, definitely. We were invited to attend Labor Notes, which is a labor conference, and it was held in Chicago of last year. We were invited to speak on panels and to really lead the discussion on a few different topics. That just blew me away and I totally had imposter syndrome. Then I realized speaking on these panels that we did know that in a sense we were experts. One of the things that I presented on was using social media.

I do a lot of the social media for the campaign, and that has been intrinsic to a lot of our success is how we have garnered supporters and followers and solidarity from other people in the labor movement but also people who follow us who are just excited about the campaign for other reasons, the fact that they care about the industry and how social media has really helped us and helped our visibility. Another panel was about different picketing strategies and what you can do differently.

We had theme nights. We made our pickets more like parties. We made them destinations. We made them entertaining. It was like street theater. That drew people to us and they wanted to support, not just once, but come back again and again for different themes, to wear different costumes, and to show their support. On these panels, that was my revelation like, oh my gosh, actually, I think we're experts on these subjects.

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Melissa Harris-Perry: Taking a quick break. More on the brand-new strippers union right after this. We're back and continuing to talk about the victory won by dancers for a union at the Star Garden Club in Los Angeles. Do you have advice for folks who are really starting to think about how to use their organizing power?

Reagan: The easiest first thing that you can do is talk to your coworkers. Stripping is a very isolating industry. If you can organize in a strip club, I truly believe you can organize anywhere. I want to say that we were extremely lucky with the resources that we attained along the way. The nonprofit Strippers United, they had a legal team that was our resource from day one.

We were also so lucky to partner with a national union, the Actors' Equity Association, which again, was not something that we had expected that was a union that big and that strong really stand behind such a forgotten-about industry that I think stripping is and the fact that there is, of course, stigma and other barriers to strippers getting the help that they need in the labor movement or otherwise.

Reaching out to other unions, having the support of other unions is so crucial too in a movement and in a campaign, so I would definitely suggest to other industries and other workplaces to talk to each other, talk to your coworkers and look for support. Look for support from nonprofits, look for support from other unions because that's how we did it. I'm hoping it'll be easier going forward for others.

Melissa Harris-Perry: What does your unionization mean then for the broader industry?

Reagan: I think that it's a huge victory for dancers. I think that this industry has gotten away with a lot of exploitation. I've been in the industry for 14 years, and I absolutely love the industry. I absolutely love my coworkers. I love the work. I want the industry to be better for dancers. I want it to not be as exploitative. I want dancers to feel safer, to be safer, to be able to, for example, ask a security guard to help them, which is something that was a pivotal reason why we wrote a petition and ended up on strike.

It's because we were not given that grace at that time. Little things like that where dancers feel safe and can be taken care of in their workplaces. There's a long way to go in general. There's a long way to go against stigma from the public. There's definitely a lot to overcome there. There's definitely a prevalence of discrimination and frankly, racism in the clubs. That has to be addressed.

In our opinion, after everything that we've gone through and everything that we've seen, having a seat at the table, being a part of a bargaining unit, being a union, is the only way at this point to address those things. We wouldn't have to have gone through all of this if it were easy to have a conversation and to have things change because there's no incentive for strip club owners to change the way that they operate the business. We have to take it upon ourselves to have a seat at the table and to make these demands and stand together in one unit as one voice.

Melissa Harris-Perry: You have done so much engagement and I got to say a pretty entertaining picket line. How are you planning to continue to maintain the presence in the community that you have fostered?

Reagan: We definitely want Star Garden to be the absolute destination. I remember when the Lusty Lady was open in San Francisco, I went to it as a kind of pilgrimage. I wanted to see the only unionized strip club peep show in America. That was a big deal. That was so much fun to walk those halls. That's what I want Star Garden to be. The notoriety, the victory of this campaign to carry over into how successful this club is.

I'm so confident in my fellow coworkers, and the frivolity that we were able to put on the picket line is not going to come close to the show that we're going to put on when we get back into Star Garden. I definitely hope that people come and support, and I really hope dancers can see what we've done and believe that they can do it themselves too. I have a feeling that throughout this whole campaign, it's been a process of watching and waiting.

I think that a lot of dancers have been watching to see what's going to happen to us like, will this really be successful? Because challenging systems is very hard. That's a hard thing to sell because for women, for fems, for sex workers, that is not a battle that is normally won. I'm really hoping that this victory can really inspire and galvanize the industry and for others to see that they can do something for themselves as well.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Reagan is a dancer and organizer with the Star Garden dancers in North Hollywood, Los Angeles, and a victor in the American labor movement. Reagan, thanks for joining us on The Takeaway.

Reagan: Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.

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