Strippers have finally been recognised as workers – and it could change the sex industry for good

On Friday, a London stripper made history by achieving legal recognition as a worker, not only for herself but for strippers up and down the country who work under similar conditions. Sonia Nowak, with the aid of her union – United Strippers, a branch of United Voices of the World – took Chandler Bars (the proprietors of London venues Browns and Horns) to an employment tribunal to contest their claim that she was self-employed and therefore not entitled to rights such as sick pay or holiday pay. The judgment sets a groundbreaking precedent for the idea that club owners are obliged to actually afford their dancers basic labour rights.

When I thought about Sonia and her case, I realised that there were a lot of similarities between our situations. Both of us show up to shifts that we have booked in advance and have to pay for to be there – on occasion, netting us a financial loss due to a lack of customers. Both of us have to take unpaid leave if we are injured at work, or have the audacity to have lives outside of the establishment and want a day off once in a while. Both of us have managers who tell us what to wear, how to act and in what way we must do our jobs. And, crucially, both of us were told again and again that we didn’t actually work in our workplaces, that we were actually operating our own businesses. I think that, if I were to take my manager to an employment tribunal, it would be almost impossible for the judge to deny that I, too, am a worker.

Of course, there are several crucial differences between the two situations. Sonia’s job is dependent on the fact that she is a far better dancer than I am. My job involves a somewhat increased level of intimacy, that is to say: full penetration. Sonia’s workplace is fully licensed. Mine is an illegal brothel.

Despite the fact that (criminalisation of my workplace aside) I meet all of the criteria set out by Judge Housego in his judgment establishing that strippers were workers, I am unable to access the employment tribunal service in order to assert that fact without my workplace being shut down and my income disappearing. Of course, the illegality doesn’t stop my job from existing. It just means that I do it with no rights or protection.

I don’t want to get dragged into the usual discourse of “Is sex work actually work?”. Partly because I think the discussion is so played out that anybody unconvinced at this point is probably just being stubborn, but more so because I don’t think that you need to afford sex work any kind of “validity” to recognise that it isn’t going anywhere any time soon and we should probably consider improving conditions in the meantime. With poverty being the main driver into the sex industry, and the reason that I and many coworkers are stuck here with no other options, criminalisation does nothing to help us leave prostitution and everything to ensure that we are exploited within it. If I’m going to hate my job regardless, I’d rather hate it with the comfort that I have the option of sick pay for when coronavirus inevitably strikes me down.

Like it or not, sex work is the way that I and thousands of others put food on the table. We provide labour for material gain in order to survive under capitalism the way that billions of others do. And, not denying but explicitly acknowledging the fact that our jobs are uniquely dangerous and gendered, today I and thousands of other workers will be striking to assert our rights.

Sonia’s case wasn’t just a personal win; it was a win for a trade union of sex workers that now boasts a membership in the hundreds. The actions of United Strippers have now improved the legal status of dancers up and down the country, and its members will strike with us today, on International Women’s Day, to demand protection for all workers in the industry – from dancers to cam workers, porn performers to prostitutes.

Unionising the sex industry is a novel idea to many. For many people, the image of a sex worker is that of someone wretched and living on the fringes of society. It can be hard to marry the stereotype with the reality that we are also the mothers at school gates, the people panic-buying loo roll in the supermarket and, yes, the workers sat in the break room with a cup of tea saying things like, “I don’t think these fee changes are fair, you know.” We have voices, and we’re using them to demand rights at work.

As we say in the sex industry: blow jobs are real jobs, and real jobs suck.

Lydia Caradonna is a writer, founding member of Decrim Now, an organiser with United Voices of the World and a sex worker