Sex Worker Organising in Australia, Netherlands, Germany, Canada and New Zealand

This chapter examines sex worker organising in Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, Canada and New Zealand. It seeks to consider these examples of sex worker organising in their own right as well as attempting to provide the basis for considering sex worker union organising in Britain and the US in a broader cross-country context vis-à-vis differences in a number of factors such as attitudes towards the sale of sex, sexual services and sexual artefacts, the legal regulation of these and trade union traditions. The reason for not considering the development of sex worker organising in each country separately arises for two reasons. Firstly, that practically there was less available material on sex worker union organising in Australia, Germany and the Netherlands than compared to that available for the Britain and the US (see discussion of methodology earlier). Secondly, the two countries chosen for comparison, Canada and New Zealand, were selected because they have not yet experienced significant developments in sex worker union organising but have ample experience of sex worker organising through pressure groups. Therefore, Canada and New Zealand obviously had less in the way of developments with which to engage in close comparative analysis. Given the consideration of sex worker organising in Australia, the Netherlands, Canada, Germany and New Zealand, it is appropriate to also examine in this chapter the international dimension to the IUSW, particularly where one of its relatively strongest groups outside Britain is to be found in Canada, and to briefly survey other developments in other countries concerning sex worker self-organisation.