Call, email or send letter to your California State Assembly member to oppose AB 1576 HERE
Next committee hearing will be at the Next hearing will be in the California Senate Labor and Industrial Relations On June 25, 2014 Wednesdays at 9:30 am in Room 2040
Opposing AB 1576: Cal OSHA has enforcement and uses fines already for lack of barriers on the sets under their blood born pathogens protocol. They already claim enforcement in cases where the workers are ‘employees’ who work under independent contracts.
The current amended version of AB 1576 has removed the mandatory testing which is good but puts the burden on performers’ to report that they have taken an HIV test to the state the state Department of Industrial Relations. This is a slippery slope upon which there are no privacy provisions in place to protect this class of workers from being exposed to discrimination and negative stigma for working in adult films. Specifically, this class of worker as well as other legal sector sex industry workers, have been subjected to discrimination by financial institutions, (Chase Bank has recently sent notices closing accounts of adult film performers), housing, employment (many adult film performers have been fired from jobs like teaching because of their past employment in the adult film industry). education opportunities that require back ground checks and child custody, (Jessica Hernandez Case which is currently being adjudicated in Sacramento Superior Court). The legislature would need to seriously strengthen anti discrimination in these areas to include immediate and meaningful consequences for violating legal erotic service providers’ privacy before this legislators can move forward.
Unintended consequence of Ab 1576 will be that performers will no longer engage in the current voluntary testing system that in place.
Another unintended consequence of codifying mandatory protected vaginal/anal penetration and not oral sex sends the wrong message to customers of prostitutes, who are already under economic pressure to provide unprotected oral sex. Oral sex still does have transmission rate of 4/10,000 for the receiver and 1/10,000 for the giver. Why do the sponsors, who are not dependent on the adult sex industry for income think the risk in Ab 1576 to perform unprotected oral sex ok? Its NOT!
AB 1576’s fatal flaw is that it risks creating incentives for more unprotected works paces as the burden of logging every sex act will result in production companies moving out of California and thereby violating the stated intent of the The California Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1973 to “advance opportunities for profitable employment” by reducing opportunities. What other industry employers are required to log every single activity in this manner? Are surgeons and dentist required to keep such a log? AB 1576 will incentivise underground production which will pose a larger health risk to the workers and the public.
I would like end by pointing out that HIV/STI testing has long been dismissed by the bill’s sponsors, AIDS Healthcare Foundation as well as Cal OSHA, (Cal OSHA public hearings 2010/11) citing that HIV/STI testing wasn’t a replacement for barrier sex which leads me to question the motives of the sponsors to include mandatory testing of adult film performers as public policy.
Maxine Doogan 6/6/2014