Part of a debate between organisers of informal workers #ISS15 Presentation by Thierry Schaffhauser from Syndicat du Travail Sexuel (STRASS).

1. Organising with STRASS

2. Some History
1973 Coyote in California
1975 France
occupation of churches
1982 London
Holy church occupation

3. Mapping the sex industry
- Porn industry
- Webcam, online chat or by phone
- Striptease & pole and lap dancing clubs
- Outdoor sex work (stations, forests, streets,
parkings)
- Indoor sex work (brothels, flats, saunas, hostess
bars, karaoke bars, massage parlours, peep shows)
- Escorting (in calls & out calls)

4. What obstacles to
unionisation?
- Criminalisation
- Stigmatisation
- No tradition of trade unionism
- No shared workplace
- Many languages spoken
- Differences of identities and ways to work

5. How do we organise?
- Legal advice & paralegal activities
- Information sharing in different languages
- Distribution of condoms and prevention material
- Safe spaces (weekly meetings, online forums,
collective meals & parties)
- Annual conference
- Campaigning & activism
- Trainings on advocacy & trade union organising

6. What do we do differently?
- Fighting police abuse & violence
- Support for undocumented migrants
- Actions against forced labour & human trafficking
- Fight against exploitation with no Labour laws &
conflation between trafficking and sex work
- Feminism and LGBT rights
- HIV & Health
- Individual support & intimate issues (care work)

7. Understanding of exploitation
- within the workplace
(fees, fines, workplace rules, health & safety
conditions)
- outside the workplace
landlords, advertising, police corruption or legal
state practices of fining, migration

8. Informal work
- Often freelance work
- De-contractualised labour
- Criminalised workplace
- Undocumented workers
The traditional weapon of
strike is often not relevant

9. Observations
Connection between different types of sex work and need
for solidarity
Link the criminalisation of some forms of informal labour
(street art, unlicensed street sales, sex work, begging, drug
dealing) with the broader exploitation of labour within the
industrial carceral complex
Social reproduction of labour & the specific oppression of
female migrant workers
Effects of globalisation and liberalism

10. STRASS successes
- decreased police abuse in some places
- more solidarity and less racism within sex workers’
communities
- sex workers are better informed about their rights
- regularisation of some undocumented migrants
- won cases in court
- from 200 to 500 members

11. What you can do to help !
- pass motions for decriminalisation and sex workers’
labour rights
- invite sex workers to public talks
- organise informal workers by opening branches in your
trade union
- fund and support events to organise informal workers
- fight austerity and for the rights of women, migrants and
minorities
- GLI manifesto needs to include the demand for the
decriminalisation of informal labour, including sex work

12. Thank you
Thierry Schaffauser
sexworkeractivist@gmail.com