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Abstract
In the United Kingdom, United Sex Workers is organizing as the sex workers' branch of the trade union United Voices of the World (UVW). Sex workers have located dancer unionization and labour rights within a political framework and set of demands relating to socially reproductive labour and decriminalization of all forms of sex work. Their efforts have led to an Employment Tribunal decision that dancers fall within the definition of “worker” found in various UK labour laws. At the same time, the broad perspective and demands of the sex-worker rights movement expose the limits of worker status, and the gains made through unionization have, at least at this time, been eclipsed by COVID-19.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the following friends and colleagues for discussing the ideas in this article extensively: Nicholas Beuret, Blair Buchanan, Manuel Cruz, Michael Ford QC, editors of the UK Labour Law Blog, Sonia Nowak, Shiri Shalmy, Sharon Thompson, United Sex Worker Branch (UVW), Richard O’Keeffe, and Xanthe Whittaker. This article would not have been possible without the CERIC (University of Leeds) postdoctoral scheme.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 The Nowak case can be found here: JUDGMENT Nowak -v- Chandlers Bars.pdf. https://drive.google.com/file/d/13QftdEGqZR_VDdOLIhmR8PDlTMJ4GZos/edit.
2 s.230(3)(b) of the Employment Rights Act 1996, s.146 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, schedule A1 Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, s. 54(3) of the National Minimum Wage Act 1998.
3 Althorp, “Beyond the Stage”; Barton, Stripped; Bouclin, “Bad Girls Like Good Contracts”; Chun, “An Uncommon Alliance”; Couto, “Clothing Exotic Dancers”; Cruz, Hardy,and Sanders, “False Self- Employment”; Fischer, “Employee Rights in Sex Work”; Mac and Smith, Revolting Prostitutes.
4 www.xtalkproject.net.
5 Weeks, Constituting Feminist Subjects; Hennessy, Materialist Feminism; Hennessy, Profit & Pleasure.
6 For exceptions, see Cruz, Within and Against the Law; Ghosh, The Gendered Proletariat; Hardy and Rivers-Moore “Compañeras de la calle”; Hardy and Cruz “Affective Organizing.”
7 Wahab, “Creating Knowledge Collaboratively”; Van der Meulen, “Action Research with Sex Workers.”
8 Stringer, Action Research.
9 Fiorito, “Union Renewal and the Organizing Model.”
10 Annett, “Doing What ‘Works Best’”; Colosi, Dirty Dancing; Egan, “Eyeing the Scene”; Cruz, Hardy, and Sanders, “False Self-Employment”; Frank, G-Strings and Sympathy; Sanders and Hardy, “Devalued, Deskilled and Diversified”; Sanders and Hardy, “Students Selling Sex”; Sanders and Hardy, Flexible Workers; Price, “Keeping the Dancers in Check.”
11 Barbagallo and Federici, “‘Introduction’”; Holmstrom, “Sex, Work and Capitalism”; Mac & Smith, Revolting Prostitutes.
12 Uber BV v Aslam [2018] EWCA Civ 2748.
13 Uber Technologies Inc. v Heller 2020 SCC 16.
14 Autoclenz Ltd v Belcher [2011] UKSC 41; IWGB v Deliveroo T/A Deliveroo, TUR1/985 (2016) (CAC); Pimlico Plumbers Ltd and another v Smith [2018] UKSC.
17 IWGB v Deliveroo T/A Deliveroo, TUR1/985 (2016) (CAC).
18 Cruz, Hardy, and Sanders, “False Self-Employment.”
19 Bruckert, Taking It Off; Hardy and Sanders, “False Self-Employment”; Price, “Stripping Women”; Price, “Keeping the Dancers in Check.”
20 Barry, The Prostitution of Sexuality; J Halley et al., “From the International to the Local”; O’Connell Davidson, “'Sleeping with the Enemy'?”
21 Law argues that this is also the case in Canada, “Licensed or Licentious? Examining Regulatory Discussions of Stripping in Ontario.”
22 Policing and Crime Act 2009, s.27(3)(1).
23 Policing and Crime Act 2009, s.27(3)(2) and (3). This excludes sex cinemas and sex shops, which are regulated under different provisions.
24 Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982, s.9(1).
25 Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982, s.13(1).
26 Sanders and Hardy, Flexible Workers, 63.
27 Colosi, “‘Over ‘sexed’ Regulation and the Disregarded Worker”; Cruz, Hardy, and Sanders, “False Self-Employment”; Sanders and Hardy, Flexible Workers; Sanders, Hardy, and Campbell, “Regulating Strip-based Entertainment.”
28 Policing and Crime Act 2009, s.27(5).
29 Worker status applies to self-employed workers that “undertake to do or perform personally any work or services for another party to the contract whose status is not by virtue of the contract that of a client or customer of any profession or business undertaking carried on by the individual” s.230(3)(b) Employment Rights Act 1996. Worker status also and all employees s.230(3)(a). For an introduction to worker status see Davidov, “Who is a Worker?”
30 UKEAT 0429/11.
31 [2014] UKSC 32.
32 Clyde and Co LLP and another v Bates van Winkelhof [2014] UKSC 32.
33 Conaghan, “Covid and Inequalities at Work”; Davidov, “Who is a Worker?”
34 IWGB v Deliveroo T/A Deliveroo, TUR1/985 (2016) (CAC); Pimlico Plumbers Ltd and another v Smith [2018] UKSC 29; Uber BV v Aslam [2018] EWCA Civ 2748.
35 Nowak v Chandler Bars Group Ltd., para 63.
36 Nowak v Chandler Bars Group Ltd., para 65–70.
37 Nowak v Chandler Bars Group Ltd., para 67.
38 s.230(3)(b) of the Employment Rights Act 1996, s.43 of the Employment Rights Act 1996, s.13 of the Employment Rights Act 1996, Regulation 2(1) of the Working Time Regulations 1998, s.146 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, schedule A1 Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, s. 54(3) of the National Minimum Wage Act 1998, and s. 83(2)(a) of the Equality Act 2010.
39 Dickson, “Black Exotic Dancers”; Soldiers of Pole, “Know your Rights”; Chávez, “California’s New Gig Economy Law.”
40 Women’s Strike Assembly, “Red Feminist Horizon.”
44 Women’s Strike Assembly, “WTF is the Women’s Strike?”
46 Bhattacharya, Social Reproduction Theory; Federici, Caliban and the Witch; Federici, Revolution at Point Zero.
49 Clare and Laser, “We’re a Group of Strippers.”
50 The emergence of radical base trade unions, primarily based in London, has seen the establishment of three new trade unions with a large membership in commercial cleaning: Independent Workers Union of Great Britain, IWGB: Putting workers first; United Voices of the World, United Voices of the World; Cleaners and Allied Independent Workers Union Contact us – CAIWU.
52 United Strippers, “Unionised Strippers' Response.”
53 Cruz, Hardy, and Sanders, “False Self- Employment, Autonomy and Regulating for Decent Work”; Sanders and Hardy, Flexible Workers; Sanders, Hardy and Campbell, “Regulating Strip-based Entertainment.”
54 Policing and Crime Act 2009, s.27(5).
56 Conaghan, “Gender and the Labour of Law.”
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Camille Barbagallo
Camille Barbagallo is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Employment Relations, Innovation and Change at Leeds University, United Kingdom.
Katie Cruz
Katie Cruz is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Bristol, United Kingdom.