Unionising Sex Workers and Other Feminists
| Published date | 01 August 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/09646639231206695 |
| Author | Katie Cruz |
| Date | 01 August 2024 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Unionising Sex Workers
and Other Feminists
Katie Cruz
University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
Abstract
A minor movement of strippers and sex workers are unionising as the Sex Workers’
Union (SWU) branch of the Bakers Food & Allied Workers Union. SWU have produced
a counter hegemonic perspective on law and society in the process of class struggle. This
perspective demystifies the view that strippers and sex workers are free workers and
enterprising subjects, or unfree vulnerable victims in need of state protection. SWU’s
counter hegemonic perspective inverts this common-sense assumption and posits that
strippers and sex workers are unfree workers and free sexual subjects. This demystifica-
tion is evident in SWU’s‘feminist law work’, which demands decommodification and
decriminalisation for all sex workers by working within, and against, official law. In con-
clusion, I argue that there are at least three reasons why other feminists should support
SWU by ceasing eradication of sex work via criminalisation and closure campaigns. This
would open space for a politics of solidarity between sex workers and other feminists,
centred on the conditions within which sex workers’labour is commodified.
Keywords
sex work, stripping, labour, employment, class, feminism
Introduction
Strippers are a divided sector within the sex workforce. The majority do not want to
unionise and want to be self-employed rather than in an employment relationship. My
previous collaborative work focused on the decision making of this majority of non-
unionised strippers and how working conditions might be improved in a way that does
Corresponding author:
Katie Cruz, Associate Professor in Law, University of Bristol, 3.61 Wills Memorial Building, Queens Rd,
Bristol BS8 1RJ, UK.
Email: katie.cruz@bristol.ac.uk
Article
Social & Legal Studies
2024, Vol. 33(4) 501–525
© The Author(s) 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/09646639231206695
journals.sagepub.com/home/sls
not turn on employment status claims (Cruz et al., 2017). Meanwhile, a minor movement
of strippers is now acting in ways that a few years ago co-authors and I thought was
highly unlikely. They are unionising with other sex workers, contesting their employment
status and the closure of strip clubs, and are engaged in a range of forms of legal action
and dissent (Barbagallo and Cruz, 2022; Cruz, 2013, 2020). This article is the first study
of class relations within which the Sex Workers’Union (SWU) branch of the Bakers
Food & Allied Workers Union (BFAWU) are organising and the place of law therein.
My argument is that the SWU have produced a counter hegemonic social and legal
narrative in the process of class struggle, which challenges the common-sense view
that strippers and other sex workers are free workers and enterprising subjects, or
unfree vulnerable victims in need of state protection.
1
SWU’s counter hegemonic per-
spective inverts this common sense and posits that strippers and other sex workers are
unfree workers and free sexual subjects. This demystification is evident in SWU’s‘fem-
inist law work’, which demands decommodification and decriminalisation for all sex
workers by working within, and against, official law. SWU’s demand for decommodifi-
cation and decriminalisation should be supported by other feminists who are concerned
about gender equality for at least the following three reasons. First, closure and crimin-
alisation campaigns can militate against women exiting sex work (Sanders, 2007; Scoular
and Fitzgerald, 2021). Second, supporting the circumscribed choices of SWU members
and non-unionising strippers to remain in sex work, and possibly organise, by ceasing
closure and criminalisation campaigns is not antithetical to supporting women who
want to leave sex work through holistic and non-punitive exiting initiatives (O’Neill
and Campbell, 2010; Pitcher, 2013). Third, attempts to abolish sex work via closure
and criminalisation campaigns will not deliver gender equality (O’Connell Davidson,
2003; Munro and Scoular, 2013; Scoular and Fitzgerald, 2021) but are experienced as
SWU and sex workers as entrenching it. Ceasing these eradication efforts would open
space for a politics of solidarity between sex workers and other feminists, centred on
the conditions within which sex workers’labour is commodified (Cruz, 2023; Scoular
and O’Neill, 2008; Scoular and Fitzgerald, 2021).
This article advances socio-legal theoretical and empirical enquiry through the case
study of SWU. First, it expands our understanding of the perspective that sex work is
work to which labour and social welfare rights and protections should apply (Abel and
Ludeke, 2021; Cruz, 2013, 2018, 2020; Mac and Smith, 2018). Second, it extends
Marxist and Marxist feminist class analysis of sex work and sex worker organising
(Cruz, 2018, 2022, Federici, 2006; Hardy, 2016; James, 2012; Walkowitz, 1982).
Third, it responds to calls for more socio-legal, empirical, and theoretical research
about sex worker, working class, and activist legal consciousness and legal mobilisation
(Holdren & Tucker, 2020; Klambauer, 2019; Kirk, 2022). It introduces the ‘feminist law
work’(Enright et al., 2020) of SWU, which has emerged in the process of class struggle,
by bringing together previous empirically grounded co-authored research with my own
empirical research and observations of the activities of the SWU branch of BFAWU
from 2021 to 2023.
This article proceeds in the following steps. The first two parts are contextual and
methodological. First, I provide an overview of the narrative of sexual exploitation, mor-
ality and vulnerability which has framed legal and political debate about stripping and sex
502 Social & Legal Studies 33(4)
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