The 1. of May is the day of labour

I’m (no name) , spokesperson of Red Edition, a migrant sex workers association from Vienna. We are part of the European and global sex work movement. Our mission is to raise the voices of sex workers to many levels in our society! Nothing about us without us!!! – is our motto!

 Let’s speak about freedom of choosing your work! Let’s speak about being not treated as a worker, but as a human being! By society, by institutions, by government, by police!!! They are all seeing us as victims, as criminals, as a cancer in the society! STOP! This is not who we are! Sex workers are people who choose sex work because of many different reasons, and you don’t need to investigate this! No! You must respect sex workers!
Government must recognise the labour rights and human rights of sex workers, because sex workers rights are human rights!

Sure, now someone can say: but in Austria sex work is legalised! Yes, legalised but not decriminalised! This model doesn’t respect the rights of sex workers, this model doesn’t recognise labour rights for sex workers! This model has mandatory health checking for sex workers!

And what do we have? This model is putting responsibility on sex workers and rules, but not rights, WE are not part of the social system in this country! So we pay taxes and follow the “obligatory rules” but we get nothing back, no benefits like other workers!

If you want to work as a sex worker, the first thing you have to do is go to the police to register as a sex worker! At the police station?! Are there other workers who register with the police when they want to work? No!

That’s why we say stop bullying sex workers! Stop patronizing us!

To be clear, our policy is not about protecting “pimps”. We strongly believe that those who exploit or abuse sex workers must be criminalised. But the reality is laws which criminalise ‘brothel-keeping’ and ‘promotion’ often lead to sex workers being arrested and prosecuted themselves. In many countries of the world, two sex workers working together for safety is considered a criminal case!

What we want is a refocussing of laws to tackle acts of exploitation, abuse, and trafficking – instead of catch-all offences that only criminalise and put in danger sex workers!

SEX WORKERS RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS! SEX WORK IS WORK! SEX ARBEIT IST ARBEIT!