this article originally appears here and is written by Thierry Schaffauser

Last week the Morning Star published an article with different takes on the sex industry.

In their majority they portrayed sex work as inherently violent and exploitative while defending its prohibition and the criminalisation of our clients.

Only the English Collective of Prostitutes expressed the voice of sex workers and those of unionised sex workers within the GMB was absent.

Thankfully, the Morning Star gives us now the opportunity to answer and have our say.

We can’t correct in detail all the inaccuracies and lies from the prohibitionists as they were too many.

If you are interested in reading the evidence, we encourage you to find it online at thierryschaffauser.wordpress.com.

Instead, we want to explain what difference sex workers’ unionisation can bring.

We are not hopeless victims who need rescue but real workers and real trade unionists. Since 2002 we have had our own branch within the GMB.

We are your comrades and we are your equals.

It is true that violence and exploitation do exist in the sex industries like they do in many other industries.

Some have tried over years to make us disappear with increasing prohibitionist measures but it never worked.

We are still there because we still need to earn a living and the violence against us is more important than ever due to increasing criminalisation.

We believe that the only way to fight efficiently against violence and exploitation is to organise our workplace and have our labour rights recognised in a decriminalised context.

Of course, decriminalisation won’t be enough. Nurses and bus drivers continue to suffer violence despite working in a legal environment.

However, with decriminalisation we could at last report crime to the police without being arrested.

This is the reason why the Association of Chief Police Officers supports decriminalisation too.

Organised within GMB sex workers can break their isolation and inform each other about potential dangerous men who pose as clients.

We can provide our members with the contacts of sex worker-friendly police officers who will take their report with respect and without investigating their migration status, potential drug use or tax registration.

We can provide contact with projects that can act as a third party in case sex workers want to remain anonymous.

The GMB can also provide free legal advice to its members and help them when they suffer discrimination, when they are victims of outing, harassment or any sort of problems.

GMB has won cases for members exploited in chat line factories and victims of abuse.

It has won cases for members who were outed in the media and sacked from their day job.

GMB can provide free training for its members who wish to find other jobs in other industries or to improve their skills and continue working in the sex industries.

For example, members of the GMB have created organisations specifically aimed at sharing skills among ourselves.

The X-Talk project provides free English classes for migrant sex workers.

The teachers have experience of working in the sex industries themselves and can thus provide a safe and non-judgmental space where the students won’t have to lie about their job, their work diary, or if they’re tired because they were working the night before.

The Sex Worker Open University is another project by members of the GMB sex workers’ branch.

Debates and workshops are organised during the week which include how to dance, massage, how to keep your emotional boundaries, self-defence, the history of the sex worker movement and many others.

This project is supported by Sertuc and the next one will be in London from October 12-16.

Last June, the first sex worker film festival was also supported by Sertuc LGBT network and attracted an important audience.

The whole Rio cinema in Hackney was full and all the tickets sold out.

This event showed how successful GMB sex workers can be at organising social gatherings where sex workers can meet and share information in solidarity.

In Hackney strippers organised within GMB and Equity have fought against the socalled “nil policy” which planned to close all Hackney adult venues.

GMB has helped to save more than 300 jobs including dancers, bartenders and security staff by opposing the policy with the support of the Hackney trades council, which our branch is affiliated to.

Despite some opposition occasionally still present within the labour movement, we have worked hard to convince our comrades that we deserve the same labour rights and the right to unionise.

We have attended many meetings and passed motions, for example at the LGBT TUC conference last year.

As a result, GMB sex workers can now proudly say that we have the support of the TUC.

This is important to us because we can use the model of the labour movement which has been the only successful one so far in the fight against violence and exploitation.

We don’t want to be helped and we don’t want pity.

We want your solidarity as comrades because we are part of the same working class.

Thierry Schaffhouser is president of GMB sex workers branch