Sex Worker Union Organising

This book concerns the projects and processes of sex worker unionisation and more widely forms of sex worker self-interest representation. Since the late 1980s, sex workers have unionised themselves as collective associations of workers in their worksites in many countries. The term ‘sex workers’, chosen by sex workers themselves, is a generic one covering all those who sell sexual services and comprises prostitutes, exotic dancers, porn actors and sex chat line workers. ,

This is the first study of the emerging phenomenon of sex workers, asserting that they are entitled to workers' rights. Drawing on examples from Australia, Britain, Canada, Germany, The Netherlands, New Zealand and the USA the book analyzes the contexts for this struggle and the opportunities and challenges facing these unionization projects.

Sex Worker Unionisation examines the challenges and opportunities offered by unionisation for Sex Workers. Exploring unionisation projects undertaken by Sex Workers in most major economies, this ground-breaking study shows how sex-workers have collectively sought to control and organise their work and working lives by co-determining the wage-effort with their de facto employers. It highlights the range of significant obstacles that have impeded their progress, including owner hostility, state regulation and the sway of radical feminism that is present in many unions. Outlining a more efficacious model for sex worker unionisation based upon combining occupation unionism and social movement unionism, this pioneering and controversial new book offers an important study of business organization in a unique industry.

Never before have prostitution, strip clubs and pornography been as profitable, widely used or embedded in mainstream culture as they are today. How society should respond to the rise of the sex trade is shaping up to be one of the Twenty-First Century's big questions. Should it be legal to pay for sex? Isn't it a woman's choice whether she strips for money? Could online porn warping the attitudes of a generation of boys? An increasingly popular set of answers maintains that prostitution is just work, porn is fantasy, demand is inevitable; so fully legalise the sex trade and it can be made safe. Kat Banyard contends that these are profoundly dangerous myths. Sexual consent is not a commodity, objectification and abuse are inherent to prostitution, and the sex trade poses a grave threat to the struggle for women's equality.Skilfully weaving together first-hand investigation, interviews and the latest research, Pimp State powerfully argues that sex trade myth-makers will find themselves on the wrong side of history.

While 'union organising' has developed over time and in many different environments, it has become apparent that a number of key problems have developed. Evaluating its efficacy in terms of union strategies, tactics, styles and resources, this title outlines a number of strategies for improving these deficiences.

How the law harms sex workers—and what they want instead Do you have to endorse prostitution in order to support sex worker rights? Should clients be criminalized, and can the police deliver justice? In Revolting Prostitutes, sex workers Juno Mac and Molly Smith bring a fresh perspective to questions that have long been contentious. Speaking from a growing global sex worker rights movement, and situating their argument firmly within wider questions of migration, work, feminism, and resistance to white supremacy, they make it clear that anyone committed to working towards justice and freedom should be in support of the sex worker rights movement.

A provocative history that reveals how sex workers have been at the vanguard of social justice movements for the past fifty years while building a movement of their own that challenges our ideas about labor, sexuality, feminism, and freedom Documenting five decades of sex-worker activism, Sex Workers Unite is a fresh history that places prostitutes, hustlers, escorts, call girls, strippers, and porn stars in the center of America’s major civil rights struggles. Although their presence has largely been ignored and obscured, in this provocative history Melinda Chateauvert recasts sex workers as savvy political organizers—not as helpless victims in need of rescue. Even before transgender sex worker Sylvia Rivera threw a brick and sparked the Stonewall Riot in 1969, these trailblazing activists and allies challenged criminal sex laws and “whorephobia,” and were active in struggles for gay liberation, women’s rights, reproductive justice, union organizing, and prison abolition. Although the multibillion-dollar international sex industry thrives, the United States remains one of the few industrialized nations that continues to criminalize prostitution, and these discriminatory laws put workers at risk. In response, sex workers have organized to improve their working conditions and to challenge police and structural violence. Through individual confrontations and collective campaigns, they have pushed the boundaries of conventional organizing, called for decriminalization, and have reframed sex workers’ rights as human rights. Telling stories of sex workers, from the frontlines of the 1970s sex wars to the modern-day streets of SlutWalk, Chateauvert illuminates an underrepresented movement, introducing skilled activists who have organized a global campaign for self-determination and sexual freedom that is as multifaceted as the sex industry and as diverse as human sexuality.