Protection from whom? In this context, the answer is those people whose best interests workers are typically expected to have at the forefront of their minds: employers and customers.
Whether it is the high price escort catering to the likes of Eliot Spitzer or the survival sex workers (and others) at the street level, all sex industry workers have the right to be free from oppressive, illegal, and violent treatment at the hands of customers and employers.
While the goal of challenging Canada's prostitution laws is to enhance industry safety, the result could well be government licensing, regulation, and monitoring of a newly legal trade. In other words, the government will take it upon itself to ensure that workers are safe and treated with respect through the same means presently enjoyed by conventional workers. This means that employment standards and injured workers' compensation legislation, Employment Insurance, CPP, and other government-made regulations will protect workers, as opposed to the misguided Criminal Code of Canada provisions presently in place. Workers might no longer operate in clandestine massage parlours, brothels, or the low tracks (nota bene: that link is to a June 2000 article regarding missing and murdered women from Vancouver's downtown eastside. It is a particularly interesting read given what we now know from the Robert Pickton conviction and inquiry).
Of course, it would also mean taxation, but that is a separate topic.
Of course, it would also mean taxation, but that is a separate topic.
Presently, sex industry workers are exposed to a myriad of risks. These include:
- Violent physical and sexual assaults at the hands of clients, employers, and thugs engaged to oppress workers
- Exposure to sexually transmitted infections
- Lack of control over the terms on which they engage in work
- Human trafficking and enslavement
- Lack of job security
- Poor working conditions
These are not unlike the risks workers face in legal trades. Industrial workers risk serious workplace injuries on the job. Police officers and bus drivers are often assaulted and even killed. Foreign workers in legal industries may be subject to human trafficking and enslavement, as recently seen in BC Supreme Court.
Workers in every industry are guaranteed safe and reasonable working hours and conditions through employment standards legislation. What distinguishes legal trades from the sex trade is that workers in the latter industry cannot avail themselves of such protections and rights without fear of criminal prosecution.
Between now and the release of judgment in the Bedford case, this blog will discuss some of the unique risks faced by sex industry workers and some of the ways worker protection might be furthered in the world's oldest profession, if it indeed becomes the newest legal one.
