A woman who applied to work at a popular Wellington strip club says she walked out after reading the employment contract and claimed it was essentially asking women to sign up for "sex slavery".
Alice* applied to be a dancer at The Mermaid Bar Wellington recently but never even worked a single shift because she was so uncomfortable with what was expected of her.
Alice, who didn't want her real name used, told Newshub the problems began when she was pressured to sign the contract without even reading it, and was discouraged from talking to other dancers.
She said her first visit to the club was fine, but when she went back to fill out all the paperwork, things went downhill.
"I had seen a few girls working that night and had tried to introduce myself and the manager told them not to talk to me yet," she told Newshub.
"The next day at the Fired Up Stilettos' protest, I saw a few of them and they said that was because a lot of the dancers are leaving due to bad conditions and the manager worries about them warning new girls."
She claimed the manager then tried to get her to sign a contract without reading it and said it was "just boring paperwork".
"The manager held it on the table covering the first page of writing with his hands and said he needed me to sign this right away," she said.
"I bought up the fact I wasn't comfortable signing right away as I needed a few days away from a loud, club environment to look over the contract. He said it wasn't important, it was just boring paperwork stuff and I had to sign it now if I wanted to work at the venue."
Alice refused and eventually the manager agreed to let her read it.
But within minutes she knew she didn't want to work there. Alice was put off by coercive fines, the shift expectations and ambiguous rules in the contract, which she said put dancers at risk.
Fees and bonds are fairly standard for strip clubs to include in their contracts but dancers are becoming increasingly fed up by them. Recently a group of strippers working at Calendar Girls in Wellington had their contracts terminated after trying to negotiate for better conditions.
Among their complaints was management taking too much of their earnings, unfair and coercive fines and being treated like employees, despite legally being classed as independent contractors.
They also said their contracts allowed dancers to be fined or fired for unreasonable and hard-to-define things such as having a bad attitude or being rude to management.
The strippers banded together to form a group called Fired Up Stilettos and petitioned Parliament to introduce better protections for adult entertainment workers.
The petition called for the Government to establish the right of adult entertainment workers to bargain collectively while maintaining independent contractor status, outlaw all fines and bonds between employers and contractors, and establish a nationwide mandatory maximum of 20 percent that an employer can take from a contractor's profits.
The protest and petition launched the industry into the public eye and saw clubs and brothels facing increased scrutiny.
But, Alice said the Mermaid's contract included many of the same demands Calendar Girls faced criticism for.
One of the most egregious rules to Alice was that dancers were required to give customers a warning before ending a private booking or lap dance if they broke the rules.
She said this is essentially asking women to allow customers to assault them if it only happens once.
"I thought the contract was simply signing your rights away and signing right up for sex slavery," she said
The contract, which Newshub has seen, includes specific details about what is considered breaking the rules. It clearly states dancers and customers aren't allowed to kiss or have sexual contact.
But it also specifically tells dancers they have to give customers a warning before ending a booking if they do break the rules. Which Alice said is completely unacceptable and puts strippers at risk.
It's not the only rule which concerned Alice. The club also has an extensive list of things strippers can be fined for such as a $360 fine for not showing up to a shift and fees for being late, taking unauthorised breaks and "intoxication".
The contract also states dancers can be fired for "insubordination, disrespecting customers or having a bad attitude".
Alice said these types of rules are unclear and leave too much up to the manager's discretion.
"The contract made me feel very uncomfortable. From rules like they control when and what you wear… assault being okay if only done once… to not getting to choose shifts, to how many you have to work, to having to pay a bond to work there, to them fining crazy amounts of money for simple things such as being late from your break… what if I got my darn period or something," Alice said.
"You are not respected as an independent contractor. As someone who has been an employee before, it's basically an employee contract but dancers are not employees," she added.
New Zealand Prostitutes Collective National Coordinator Dame Catherine Healy agreed, telling Newshub these sorts of contracts are "heavy-handed and lead to real harm".
"They reflect a coercive and bullying style of management. Imagine not being able to terminate a booking instantly with a customer who has broken the rules," Dame Catherine said.
Employment law specialist Catherine Stewart told Newshub, in general, contracts with a high level of control are more in line with an employment relationship, not a contractor one.
Stewart said banning contractors from working for competition, setting how much workers are paid and telling workers what hours to work are generally more in line with an employee relationship, rather than an independent contractor.
She said the argument for whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor generally hangs on whether the worker serves their own business or someone else's business.
Stewart said while there are several legal tests, in general, the more control an employer exercises over a worker, the more likely they are to be considered an employee.
"In this case, it appears that the businesses are having the best of both worlds: on the one hand, their contracts exert a high level of control over the workers, but on the other hand, the workers are being designated independent contractors which means they do not have fundamental employment law rights," she said.
"This concern is heightened owing to the fact that workers in this industry are likely to have enhanced vulnerability, owing to an intrinsic risk of physical or sexual assault and the stigma associated with the work they do, making it generally more difficult for them to raise issues and even more important that they are not taken advantage of. "
She said the fines in the contract are "particularly problematic" because they are largely at the discretion of the business owner making them " ripe for abuse".
"As independent contractors, there is a possibility that such fines might be regarded as unlawful if the workers could establish that they are out of all proportion or exorbitant to their legitimate interests, however, this is a high threshold," Stewart said.
"If they were employees on the other hand, it would probably be much easier to establish the fines are unlawful deductions under the Wages Protection Act."
Mermaid Bar told Newshub it did not want to comment on the matter.
*Alice is not her real name and has been changed to protect her identity.
