A Trade Union Sex Work section in activity in Strasbourg

In France, the CNT-F interprofessional union of Bas-Rhin (STP 67) has been in its ranks for several years, several sex workers grouped in an union section, but without field activity. It has changed since March 2024! Noting that the struggles for the rights of the Sew Workers are still as necessary in France in 2024 as 50 years ago (with the sex workers movement of Lyon in 1975, which is a reference to this day), we decided to re-act our union section through our union and from now on, actively struggle on the ground, in the anarcho-syndical and revolutionary spirit of the CNT-F.

Our section has been very active since this launch:

To begin with, we have written and printed a leaflet that presents all the things we fight against, and why we organize ourselves in a union to lead our struggles. Then we created accounts on the so-called social networks, where we publish regularly, highlighting the slogan “No Prohibitionism nor Abolitionism nor Regulationism – trade unionism! " On March 8, 2024, we participated in the cross-sectional feminist demonstration organized in Strasbourg by autonomous feminist collectives, where we spoke by emphasizing that “there is no feminism without the whores”, and displayed the main demands of the Sex Workers: “The complete decriminalization of sex work!”, “Common law for the workers of sex!”, “Full residence and work rights for migrant Sex Workers!”, “Abolitionism is a violence against women”. On May 1, 2024 we took part in the post-demo press table of our union in Molodoi (a punk self-managed place) and all day to the public who was passing through it, which produced a lot of interesting contacts and exchanges, including with sex worker colleagues.

On 21 May 2024, the independent local press (Rue89 Strasbourg) dedicated us an article-maintenance in solidarity and very noticed: https://www.rue89strasbourg.com/work-du-sexe-section-syndicale-strasbourg-301399

During the preparation of our meeting on June 2, 2024, one of us remembered a piece of the group from Nancy “Carmen Colère heard” in concert, a song called “Daughter of” and which supports the Sex Workers. We asked the band if this piece was online somewhere and if we could use it to create a video “teaser” for June 2. The band was delighted with our request, on purpose recorded the piece, which was not published, for us, and allowed us to use it in teaser video. We are delighted with all the active solidarity, and very warmly thanked the group. And so on June 1 and 2, 2024, we organized militant events on the occasion of the International Day of the Struggles of Sex Workers (day commemorating the movement of the Sex Workers of Lyon, begun by the occupation of the Church of St-Nizier on June 2, 1975): a screening-debate on this subject on June 1 and a public gathering on June 2. It was the first time that a public activist event of tds took place in Strasbourg on that crucial date, we were 30 people there. This gathering was well received by the public, and to our surprise even the local mainstream press interviewed us there and published a benevolent article. On June 4, 2024 we were in an internationalist approach, supporting our Germans Sex Worker colleagues in their struggle against the introduction of the penalization of their clients (penalization in force in France since 2016, with the disastrous effects we know). Upstream, two of us participated in a video interview on this subject carried out by a German social work organization that is active on the ground with our td colleagues in Germany and also in Strasbourg, cross-border. This video was projected and debated in Freiburg on June 4 with the participation of one of us. We have good militant contacts in Germany, although they are not unionists at the moment. In short, our union section is well active and publicly visible. But we are also working very hard: since mid-June we have launched an internal working group to the union on sex work, in which non-Sex Worker comrades are also involved to contribute their know-how, e.g. legal and technical. Because sex work is a much more complex subject than it looks, e.g., with the quite recent rise of virtual tds on the Internet that asks a lot of questions about the order of labour law and also of the technical field (disguised salariat, cybersecurity, right to image…). Group we are fully involved in. And of course we regularly tell and show to our colleagues in Strasbourg how a Sex Worker, self-managed and struggle union could be supporting for them. In summary, we are very happy to be finally launched on the ground, and we invite our sex workers to organize themselves as we do. We will gladly share the tools we have created, contact us. Our links and addresses: https://linktr.ee/cntstp67tds