Strippers in Montreal have called for a strike during this month\u2019s Formula 1 Canadian Grand Prix in protest over working rights and conditions.<\/p>\n
The Sex Work Autonomous Committee (SWAC) is planning the strike for May 23, the day of the sprint race and qualifying at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. The grand prix takes place the following day. The grand prix weekend was described by the SWAC as the \u201cbusiest\u201d and \u201cmost lucrative period of the year\u201d for clubs.<\/p>\n
In a statement, SWAC laid out their goals, demanding the abolition of the bar fee (which strippers are required to pay to perform in clubs), worker status and \u201csafe working conditions like in any other jobs\u201d.<\/p>\n
It said that it had deliberately targeted the grand prix to make the biggest and most effective statement. Last year, a record 352,000 people attended the Canadian Grand Prix, which was won by Mercedes\u2019 George Russell, over the course of the weekend.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe think the grand prix is the best time to strike,\u201d it said. \u201cThe clubs are at their busiest, making it the most lucrative period of the year for our boss. This is our chance to threaten that income and affect them when it hurts the most.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring this time, despite management making more money, dancers have to put up with a list of new rules, increased bar fees, overbooking and generally worse working conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n
SWAC claimed that \u201cbar fees are increased exorbitantly during F1 and new arbitrary rules are often heavily enforced with exploitative penalty fees attached\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reality is that we\u2019re clearly trapped in an employer\/employee power dynamic, and the bar fee model benefits only the bosses,\u201d it added. \u201cIndeed, they have every incentive to bring in as many dancers as possible each night to maximize their profits. As for our safety, our employers show very little concern and leave us to handle it on our own.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Canadian Grand Prix gets underway with the weekend\u2019s only practice session on Friday May 22 at 1:30 p.m. local time (12:30 p.m. ET; 5:30 p.m BST) before sprint qualifying four hours later. The sprint race is at 1 p.m. local time on Saturday, with grand prix qualifying at 5 p.m. The grand prix itself is at 5 p.m on May 24.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Strippers in Montreal have called for a strike during this month\u2019s Formula 1 Canadian Grand Prix in protest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":671536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-671535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=671535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/671536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=671535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=671535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=671535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}