Sex workers organising and fighting back
A joint Workers’ Liberty / Labour Representation Committee fringe
meeting at Unison National Conference
Opposing motion 117, which support the “Swedish model” on prostitution
Speaker from the International Union of Sex Workers/GMB sex workers’ branch. Chaired by Alison Brown, recently elected to Unison Health Service Group Executive (pc)
6pm, Wednesday 16 June
Premiere Inn Hotel, Westbourne Road, Bournemout
roll up, roll up…x:talk is hiring
Position available:
Teacher for English classes for migrant sex workers
The x:talk project is seeking a suitable candidate to teach and co-ordinate our English language classes for migrant sex workers in London. The x:talk project is a sex worker-led workers co-operative which approaches language teaching as knowledge sharing between equals and regards the ability to communicate as [...]
Another Valentine’s Day Special from Feminist Fightback…
Sex, Work, and Sex Work: Building a feminist analysis and a feminist struggle
Sunday, 14th Feb,
4-7pm at The Foundry, 86 Great Eastern St
London EC2A 3JL (nearest tube Old Street)
What does understanding sex work as labour bring to our analysis of prostitution? How might it change the way sex workers and feminists fight exploitation and violence? When [...]
On Sex Work
passed by the Greater London Labour Representation Committee
http://www.l-r-c.org.uk/
The criminalisation of those who work in the sex industry helps to divide the working class. It separates illegal workers from legal workers and drives people into clandestine situations where they face dangerous and exploitative conditions.
Moral panic over trafficking has created a smokescreen behind which the state has [...]
Colonised yesterday; exploited today; tomorrow, regularised
This article first appeared on the French New Anticapitalist Party’s website on 22 October.
Translated for Workers’ Liberty by Ed Maltby.
A new wave of undocumented migrant workers’ strikes, bigger than that of April 2008, began on the 12th of October. Strikers are determined to get papers for all. To win that, solidarity from all workers is [...]
Migrant Workers Take Action in Airport
As a part of the ongoing cleaners’ campaign in Holland on Thursday about 120 migrant workers did a civil disobedience at Schiphol airport’s main plaza (a sit-in).
They shouted for respect and demanded back pay, full time for all the temporary (agency) workers there, and paid transportation. There was a lot of press due to the [...]
Sex, Slaves and Citizens: the politics of anti-trafficking
“Bonded labourers”, “sex slaves”, “victims of organized crime”. Identified as victims of trafficking, these are the terms commonly used to describe migrant women and men in abusive labour relations/conditions in the UK. In this text we argue that the lack of definitional clarity and the constant slippage between “illegal immigration”, “forced prostitution”, and “trafficking” diverts attention from the role of the state in constructing poor work and vulnerable workers. In discussing trafficking in relation to the politics of sex, the politics of labour, and the politics of citizenship, we bring the state back into the analysis of trafficking, and show that the language of trafficking needs to be recognised as part of a more general attempt to depoliticise migration and struggles over citizenship.
Feminist Fightback Responds to Cath Elliot
Having been mentioned several times in Cath Elliot’s ‘The Great IUSW Con’, Feminist Fightback would like to reply to the accusations levelled at both the IUSW and Fightback’s support for sex workers’ rights. We have been saddened to read yet another abolitionist article which, rather than engage in thoughtful and honest debate, seeks to obscure [...]
TRADE UNION PROTECTIONS FOR SEX WORKERS’ MTG, WSF - BRAZIL
information from the WSFDiscuss** email list
A meeting is being organized by colleagues at the Karnataka Sex Workers Union and the New Trade Union Initiative (NTUI, India) on Trade Union Protections for Sex Workers at the WSF. There will be one session on the 30th Jan, on “Trafficking, Migration and Sex Work,” and an all-day meeting [...]
SOLIDARITY WITH CLEANERS ON THE UNDERGROUND - TAKE ACTION
note: please circulate the information below to all contacts and networks
17 years ago, cleaners on the Underground in London earnt £5.75 an hour. In 2008, many earn less than this. Cleaners on the Underground have taken three days of strike action this summer for a London living wage, pensions, sick pay, an end to third [...]