Porn Valley- Rob Spallone walked into the hearing today for Worker Health and Safety in the Adult Business wanting his doctor's coat. Every time someone new went to speak before the Assembly Committee on Labor and Employment which was chaired by Paul Koretz, Spallone nudged me asking who this person or that person was. Just to fuck with him, I told Spallone it was a doctor. "Everybody's a fuckin' doctah," Spalone says.
At the pace the hearing was going, Spallone would have had the time to acquire a medical degree but not enough performers to assemble a porn shoot. Such as it was, Mr. Marcus was one of the few adult performers in attendance. At one point, Seymore Butts rose out of his chair and was ruled out of order when he said that some remarks by Free Speech's Kat Sunlove didn't reflect the thinking of the entire board of Free Speech.
In what could be a summer of discontent in the adult industry look for more of that second-guessing as the state rears to mandate condoms and the industry kicks and bucks like a petulant child being sent to bed without its supper. With what the state was proposing, the $12 billion dollar a year adult industry would also be on the hook for a lot of costs, not the least of which is testing.
At least that appears to be where things are headed. Meanwhile, the media was having a field day with the Ms. Arroyo outburst http://adultfyi.com/read.aspx?ID=3993 as if this were better than an Iraqi prison camp story.
Representing state and local in the morning session were Vicky Heza, Chief for Enforcement of CAL-OSHA; Dr. Jonathan Fielding, Director of Public Health for the Los Angeles Dept. of Health Services and Dr. Gail Bolan, Chief STD Control Branch, Prevention Services, California Dept. of Health Services.
Speaking on behalf of the adult industry were Sunlove, the Free Speech Coalition's Executive Director; attorney Jeffrey Douglas who's on the Free Speech board; AIM's Sharon Mitchell, Gill Sperlein, general counsel for Titan Media; and Nina Hartley. As you might expect, the industry would like to see the state politely go away and allow the industry to go about its merry business.
Attorney Douglas, arguing against mandated condom use and anything else that had the word mandate attached to it, was attempting to throw his lasso around the Free Speech issue. "Don't let the desire for the perfect defeat the good," Douglas said as though he had just broke open a fortune cookie. Douglas said the types of mandates being considered by the state were "appalling" and "antithetical" to the First Amendment.
Sunlove also offered some astounding statistics claiming that the industry employed 50,000 people statewide and accounted for $31 million in sales taxes. The statistics, of course came from AVN which besides policy wonking and magazine publishing has now become the Elias Sports bureau of the adult industry.
Sunlove, touting her Master's Degree in Political Science along with her union background, said the industry was functioning very well with its current protocols; centralized data base and educational procedures locked in place, thank you.
Adopting the tactic that lobbyist Mike Ross on adultfyi http://adultfyi.com/read.aspx?ID=3982 said the state is already hip to, Sunlove said government mandates would force the industry underground and out of state. Douglas said pretty much the same thing.
"The capacity to become transparent and disappear is remarkably easy," said Douglas failing to account for why his client Max Hardcore hadn't adopted a simiar procedure when the city of Los Angeles was breathing down his neck. Douglas also said there was a perceived economic incentive to make movies without condoms.
As another anti-condom argument it was also brought up that European markets tend to reject movies with condoms.AIM's Mitchell, in her testimony, defended the organization to the hilt and mentioned that since its inception over 80,000 tests have been conducted with 16 HIV positives having been detected. Belying a point that the state was trying to make about there being an HIV crisis, Mitchell said, "Five cases do not an epidemic make, though tragic."
In a confidentiality issue, Mitchell was also particularly concerned over the manner in which the state combed through AIM records. Mitchell described the industry as being torn apart by the "scrutiny of bureaucracy" and also stated that mandatory use of condoms could lead to disaster.
Koretz, who played the role of the benign Uncle Paulie throughout the hearing said he was nervous in that the industry quarantine ended too soon. Mitchell conceded that adult companies were shooting regardless of the quarantine but that care was taken not to use talent on the quarantine list.
Also putting the debate about the HEARD system apparently to rest, Mitchell stated that AIM would be relying on Adultdat.
CAL-OSHA's Heza said her agency was acting on a complaint that had been filed. Immediately people began unconsciously looking around the room to determine who the dirty rat was.
Because of the complaint, Heza said there were safety issues now to be investigated within the business, though Heza admitted there wasn't much CAL-OSHA had in the way of jurisdiction outside of an employer-employee relationship. Adult performers are generally considered to be independent contractors. Firing the first pro-condom condom salvo, Heza, however, said the state's Bloodborne Packaging Standard would require "barrier protection," i.e., condoms as a standard precaution in the style of sexual activity the industry engages in. And Heza said that testing such as the type AIM conducts is not a substitute for that standard precaution. Heza also noted that this was the first time of an instance of someone in the adult industry filing a complaint and compared the situation to the garment industry where workers are generally reluctant to come forward for fear of retaliation.
Dr. Fielding was also in agreement about the condoms and said that adult performers should not have to work in life-threatening conditions. Echoing Heza's comments about screening, Dr. Fielding said the procedure wasn't adequate enough and that the state should be the one to set up screening procedures with the industry bearing the costs.
