Sex Entertainment Venues: Regulating Working Conditions

Women who work in the lap dancing industry are stigmatised and often exploited by unregulated working environments making the work precarious, unstable and potentially unsafe. Aside from moral opinions regarding how they earn money, thousands of women each night in the UK are taking part in exotic dance to earn a living. The conditions under which they work are mostly unregulated, as current regulation focuses on the premises and the external aspects of regulation such as fire regulations, door security and selling alcohol. How the dancers experience their jobs is currently not considered a regulatory concern. In a recent ESRC project involving a large scale survey of 200 dancers and follow up interviews with 30 dancers and 60 other people involved in the industry (club managers, owners, door staff, 'house mums', health and safety officers, police, licensing officers etc), we exposed the motivations for dancing and their experiences as self employed independent contractors. This research is innovative as it moves away from the existing literature on lap dancing which focuses on the identities and emotional management strategies of the dancers and their relationships with the customers. For the first time, this research project examines the dancers experiences as workers. Two important themes came out of the research. First, that the status of 'self employed' is misleading. Financial exploitation from management was a concern expressed by participants: fees paid to work in the club were often high, along with random fines, internal tipping systems, and the threat of instant dismissal. Safety inside the clubs, especially in private closed-off spaces was another concern for some participants. Working long hours throughout the night with few facilities or a space to rest and refresh were the kinds of issues that dancers felt made their jobs difficult. Secondly, the majority of dancers were young, single women under 30 years of age, and were also in other forms of low paid jobs (such as retail, beauty, and bar work) and/or were also studying. The group who mainly used dancing as their sole income were migrant women. For all of the participants, dancing was considered a highly flexible job but at the same time could not be relied on due to the volatile and unstable nature of the industry. Therefore dancing was used strategically to manoeuvre out of precarious employment prospects and to build a more secure and financially stable future.
The researchers believe that these two findings can be acted upon and made relevant to policy and practice in an attempt to improve the working conditions for the women who work in the clubs. This proposed project comes at a time when there has been some new laws introduced in 2010 to govern the way in which lap dancing clubs operate and change how they are licensed. This programme of work will take key research findings forward to a non-academic audience made up of policy makers, licensing practitioners, unions and industry members who can act upon them and improve standards through the licensing processes. The project will work with the HM Revenue & Customs to provide education and workplace rights information to dancers regarding paying tax and the benefits of doing so. Information in an accessible form will be given to unions and representative groups who can take forward this campaign for better working conditions. Partnership work will also be conducted with West Yorkshire Police Community Safety Team to develop safety information and a clear line of reporting incidents. To do this we will write five bespoke briefing papers and create two visual summaries so that the findings from the research can be understood without dense text and statistics. In all of our activities dancers will be consulted and integrated into the planning and delivery of the activities to ensure that their input shapes the materials created. A website will allow these materials to be permanently available.

The beneficiaries and users of this project span a wide range of audiences. Firstly, those involved in managing and organising the lap dancing industry, some of whom were participants in the initial research, will be recipients of the findings. Second, dancers will receive summaries from the findings and also benefit from a bespoke set of workshops and information around safety, tax compliance and workplace rights. Permanent resources will be created to be cascaded down to as many clubs and dancers as possible, through induction packs used in the clubs. Also, these materials will be permanently on a website. Third, five briefing papers will be written for the specific audiences of: licensing and enforcement officers, local authority regulators, unions, safety organisations, industry management. Fourth, these briefing papers will be delivered through targetted seminars to the above audiences where their specific agenda's can be addressed. Finally, HM Revenu & Customs Business Partnership team will benefit from access and the ability to conduct targetted work at this hard to reach industry. Some of these groups have competing interests so bespoke seminars addressing their concerns and interests is the most effective way in which to make the research findings active and applicable.

The ways in which the beneficiaries may benefit from the research are far reaching. We anticipate that the dancers are the most likely group to benefit both directly and indirectly. Through direct consultation and workshops with the dancers, we hope to improve the knowledge and skills that these workers have regarding their workplace rights and the advantages of being tax compliant. We also hope that some club owners and managers take on board the issues that have been reported to the researchers regarding the conditions under which they work. For instance, more information regarding safety, personal insurance and the tax system will enable dancers to fully understand their status as self employed independent contractors. We estimate 6,000 dancers could receive the information.

At a policy level, the audiences of Local Government Regulators and licensing officers are involved with directly creating and enforcing policy. The follow-on funding maps onto a change in law during 2010, which overhauled the way in which lap dancing venues are licensed. During 2011 all Local Authorities will be consulting and drafting policy relating to the new law. One new aspect of the law is that local Licensing Committees now have the power to stipulate precise conditions of the license. It is under this power that we hope to influence policy so that welfare and working conditions are included in the licensing process. This has already been achieved with the Leeds City Council Licensing Committee (Bristol, Cornwall and West Dorset also) who have taken on some or all of the recommendations from the research findings. One of the key areas we hope to impact upon is to raise and review the safety strategies in clubs, particularly around private booths. Working with workplace safety experts the Suzy Lamplugh Trust and local project Genesis, the safety concerns of dancers will be a core focus, producing best practice for safety inside and outside the clubs. This will be supported by the work of the West Yorkshire Police Community Safety Team. Finally, HM Revenue & Customs will seek tax compliance from a small percentage of dancers.

There will also be an academic impact. Firstly, this will relate to the innovative dissemination tool, the Inforgraphic Summary, which will be written up as a useful visual aide to presenting large data to non-academic audiences. Secondly, the academic outputs will contribute to the gender and work debates, placing lap dancing in the broader context of the political economy of work. This will directly feed into teaching modules and postgraduate supervision at the University of Leeds which have a strong research-led approach.