Just saw two interesting articles on labor safety and organization.
Alexa Rohlsen says she danced at a strip club to pay her way through cosmetology school, but these days, it’s been a struggle….
When she injured herself falling off the stripper pole, she had no insurance and so she was on her own when she had to go to the hospital.
The production company behind Star Wars: The Force Awakens is being prosecuted over the incident in which Harrison Ford broke his leg….A spokesperson added: “By law, employers must take reasonable steps to protect workers – this is as true on a film set as a factory floor.”
Work is work, and people should be able to work safely in all jobs.
dedc79
It all makes sense now. They put Han Solo down like they would a horse that’s broken its leg.
ploeg
Roger Moore
This is why I support laws requiring porn actors to use condoms during filming. Producers argue that it devalues the product because consumers don’t want to watch actors wearing them. I see it as a workplace safety issue, and I treat that complaint with as much contempt as any employer claiming they have to maintain a dangerous work environment for commercial reasons.
Germy
Show business can be dangerous as hell. Vic Morrow, along with Myca Dinh Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen lost their lives during filming of the Twilight Zone movie.
William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy suffered permanent hearing damage after an explosion on the set of Star Trek.
There was a John Wayne movie (I can’t remember the title) that was filmed near radioactive sites, and many of its stars died of cancer.
eldorado
not sure if it is still the case, but the fiancee (later wife) of a friend of mine put them both through college by dancing, and when she would start her shift she was already owed the club a certain amount of money in ‘fees’ . i think it amounted to 3-4 private dances. so only the top dancers really made any money at all, and on slow nights, nobody did.
Just Some Fuckhead
Why don’t they outfit stripper poles with guard rails and other safety accessories and make the dancers wear helmets?
Brett
Now if they can just unionize. Honestly strippers and sex workers of all kinds could probably benefit from some type of union.
@Roger Moore
To be fair, they used to argue the “no condoms” thing was for safety reasons – hours of sex can cause some serious chafing from condom use, making women even more likely to pick up STDs. Plus they did mandatory STD testing, and shut down shoots when someone turned up positive.
I don’t buy it as a rationale anymore, though, and support requiring condom usage. The decline in the financial side of the industry means there’s going to be much more temptation to take risks over it, and on top of that a lot of performers are moonlighting as escorts to help make ends meet.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
And there’s a doctor’s strike in the UK.
Cacti
Couldn’t they have just put Han in a wheelchair?
Would have made his character more believable.
Woodrowfan
@Brett:
wait, they don;t have sex for like 20 minutes, have an organism, and go home a few hundred dollars richer? damn, another illusion shot to hell.
Kay
I’m glad to see the strip clubs use the same “independent contractor” dodge as everyone else. They’re really pretty conventional after all!
jake the antisoshul soshulist
Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker was filmed at an abandoned chemical factory. Both Tarkovsky and the cinematographer died of cancer at a relatively yoing age. Which many attributed to the toxic materials at the site.
I suppose Disney itself would be able to avoid responsibility for the Ford accident.
jake the antisoshul soshulist
@Kay:
Exploit workers for profit. Pretty stsndard business model.
Kay
If you want to watch something truly scary about workplace safety regulation enforcement, watch this.
You will find that environmental laws have much, much more teeth than anything that protects workers. Arguably the best way to reach an employer who has a loooong record of dead and maimed employees is to find an environmental violation and shut them down with that.
Corner Stone
Uber, except for stripping.
Kay
@jake the antisoshul soshulist:
I talk to dancers (the name they prefer) in the course of my job and I think they exaggerate what they make at these places. They never have two nickels to rub together yet I’m supposed to believe they’re taking home 500 dollars a night. That may be true in some areas but after a decade of talking to them and observing how they live I don’t buy it here. It may be the best money they can make but since the second-best is 10 bucks an hour that has to be taken into account.
Cacti
@Kay:
The problem for them is that while they get a lot in tips if they work at a popular place, they’re employed as independent contractors rather than employees of the club. So the club gets to nickel and dime them for everything work related. I’d guesstimate that most make less than 30k per year after all of their expenses are taken off the top.
Kay
@Corner Stone:
The Uberists are striking. I cheered. I love this new idea of “we’re not in a union but we’re going on strike anyway”.
They should have thought of that years ago. Why not. There’s no rule about that.
Kay
@Cacti:
I don’t go into the details because workplace rip-offs enrage me and I’m not willing to do anything about it, but you can’t tell me people are just willingly getting evicted with their children and driving around with no insurance and bald tires and jumper cables. I’m skeptical of the big bucks claims. I think it makes everyone feel better about it to say that but since their customers are making 15 dollars an hour I’m not clear where these giant tips are coming from.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
My guess is that when they say they’re taking home $500 a night, what they mean is they can make $500 a night, which means they once made something close to $500 on the luckiest, busiest night of their career. They tell themselves how lucky they are and how much they can make because it makes the routine indignities of the business easier to bear. There’s no deception like self deception.
Corner Stone
@Kay: For this, and many other reasons, I wish I had a bunch of money. Because I would set up shop in every one of Uber’s most profitable locations and flood the market with a better product. Lower rates, no surge pricing, take lower fees from drivers, reimburse for cleaning related expenses, etc.
IOW, I would happily lose money to provide a superior product and push that scumbag CE-Bro Travis right the F out of business. Because really, what is Uber offering that has *any* barrier to entry at this point?
Chyron HR
Wait a minute, the Star Wars guy is named “Han Solo”? I’ve been calling him “Hans Solo!” Why didn’t someone tell me? Aw, I’ve been making an idiot out of myself!
Corner Stone
@Kay:
Completely anecdotal, and I’m sure a lot of people have some variation on this story, but a friend of mine dated a girl and a couple years after high school she started dancing. It was not uncommon for her to bring home $1K or more a night, and she actually made more money during business “lunch” shifts. Of course, this was in a high end place in Houston, so…
I’m sure in some respects it’s a lot like lawyers. The high end make a fortune and the average lawyer makes something like $35K a year. I bet it would be hard to make much scratch in a club out in Podunkaville, even if it were the only one around for 4 counties.
ETA, and this was over 15 years ago also, too.
Kay
@Corner Stone:
There’s just a “too good to be true” sense about it that immediately makes me wonder. At the end of the day all of these schemes are about shifting risk, from the employer to the employee. On my worst days I think the entire US private sector spends most of their time figuring out how to cut corners and shift risk from THEM to YOU. If they spent half as much time developing something new and valuable AND REAL we’d all be in fat city.
Amir Khalid
@Chyron HR:
What, you thought he was German?
Amir Khalid
@Corner Stone:
Here in Malaysia, the agency that regulates commercial transportation has given out stickers for cab drivers to display, warning that drivers for Uber and similar services operate illegally by (a) not having commercial transport licences for their vehicles and (b) not carrying passenger insurance. Does Uber do things like this elsewhere in the world?
Oatler.
@Kay: There will always be risk to shift until they’ve sucked the world dry, and they’ve had free pass from governments to do so since Year One.
Kay
@Oatler.:
You really have to put quite a bit of work into figuring out if you’ll make any money with one of these “new” low wage jobs. “Okay, what is your overhead? No, no, no they’re giving you GROSS, you need NET and stop listening to the other people who work there- we need documented earnings from them before you take this shit job and waste 6 months”
It’s exhausting.
Corner Stone
@Amir Khalid: Do you mean does Uber flaunt local regulation everywhere they operate, and essentially steal from the Commons by offering private services and paying zero for public licensing or meeting regulatory code?
If that is your question then in my understanding that is their entire business model. Cheat local government out of revenue, claim Uber drivers are all independent contractors, provide an app for ride scheduling, and then take up to 30% of all fares.
As I previously stated, I’m not sure why they haven’t been targeted for a price war by another player. And if not, isn’t that essentially the only outcome if the govt allows them to continue operating? There’s no barrier to entry and next to no cost for startup overhead.
Amir Khalid
@Corner Stone:
Yes, that was my question. Thanks.
Corner Stone
@Amir Khalid: I am also not sure why union drivers in countries, such as France let’s say, haven’t been beating the Uber drivers senseless. Not advocating physical violence, but it seems a likely occurrence as Uber drivers are essentially stealing money from licensed and regulated cab drivers.
Amir Khalid
@Corner Stone:
In a number of countries, including Malaysia, cab drivers have demonstrated against Uber and others of its ilk. So the regular cabbies are angry, but offhand I don’t know of any violence.
prufrock
@Germy: The Conqueror. It was so bad that Wayne arranged for it to never be on television while he was alive.
Docg
@Roger Moore: Meth and cocaine get the bulk of their earnings. It is a tough business.
chopper
@Woodrowfan:
i wanna watch what you’re watching.
Mnemosyne
Film shoots are dangerous, because way too many people are more invested in pleasing the director than in safety. The “Twilight Zone” deaths empowered stunt coordinators much more and those injuries have gone down, but you still have stupid shit happening because nobody wants to say “no” to the director.
The director who got his camera operator killed in Georgia went to jail for manslaughter, but I can’t help but think that the guy would have walked if it had happened on a set in LA. Way too many people who like to think of themselves as future top directors.
Also, too, Michael Bay is infamous for putting his actors in dangerous situations. Tea Leoni was knocked out cold on the set of “Bad Boys,”‘and they treated her like she was a whiner.
Mnemosyne
@chopper:
Well, if you don’t wear a condom, you certainly could end up with an organism of some kind, though it usually takes 9 months.
boatboy_srq
@Amir Khalid: I think s/he thought he had a prior career in porn. You know: “before the dark times, before the Empire.” Some of us would have paid to see Han’s solo…
boatboy_srq
@chopper: Especially if they’re a few hundred (thousand?) dollars richer after having an organism after 20 minutes….
boatboy_srq
With the dancers, I keep wondering why AEA or AFTRA isn’t involved somehow. And then I remember Taft-Hartley…
Joe Falco
“You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred.