Kimberly D. Krawiec || Recent reporting in the Nevada Independent and other sources details unionization efforts by sex workers at Sheri’s Ranch, a licensed brothel in Pahrump, Nevada, with the Communications Workers of America (CWA), along with allegations of management retaliation. According to the Independent:
Lawyers for CWA, a 700,000-member strong affiliate of the AFL-CIO that represents entertainment and media employees, submitted a request Tuesday to the Arizona regional office of the National Labor Relations Board asking for an emergency bargaining order and an injunction against the brothel’s termination of three courtesans.
A majority of the brothel’s 74 courtesans have agreed to join the union, but to do so the workers will have to prove that they are employees rather than independent contractors – the usual classification for Nevada brothel workers. The proper classification of brothel staff – and other “repugnant” workers, including plasma donors and Phase I medical research subjects (“guinea pigs,” as they prefer to be called) – is an issue I recently wrote about in Repugnant Work, forthcoming in Jonker, Julian David, and Grant J. Rozeboom (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Work.
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As I emphasize there, at least some brothel workers may have a plausible claim to employee status. From the chapter:
Employment categories themselves are a function of cultural understandings of work that, as already noted, are in flux (as are cultural understandings of gig work, more generally). As these understandings change, along with the industries in which RIGA [Repugnant Income Generating Activity] providers operate, traditional employee classifications may come under pressure, particularly for guinea pigs and Nevada brothel workers, both of whom may be subject to employer control for extended periods during mandatory on-premises stays that are increasingly the subject of litigation and criticism.[1]
[1] Dep’t of Emp., Training & Rehab., Emp. Sec. Div. v. Sierra Nat’l Corp., 136 Nev. 98, 460 P.3d 18 (2020) (challenge to Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation’s audit and reclassification of sex workers at the Love Ranch as employees); Sears v. Mid Valley Enters., LLC, No. 219CV00532APGDJA, 2020 WL 8872291 (D. Nev. Apr. 16, 2020) (denying brothel’s motion to dismiss sex worker’s claim that she is an employee, not an independent contractor).
Press reports detail some of these control issues, as reported by the (now terminated) courtesan organizers:
Jetson outlined a range of other practices she said generally limit courtesans’ autonomy while living in the brothel.
Sex workers pay rent to reside at the brothel for one to three weeks at a time. During those periods, their laptops are confiscated, email addresses are controlled and monitored and freedom of movement is largely dependent on managers’ approval. She also said their rooms can be randomly searched and that audio of workers’ negotiating sessions with clients is monitored.
Predictably, union and brothel spokespersons disagree on the classification question:
Union representatives argue the labor standards and practices at brothels qualify courtesans as full-time employees, affording the women the right to collectively bargain without fear of termination.
Lemur, the Sheri’s Ranch spokesperson, said redefining the classification would change a longstanding industry standard.
Although the reporting lists a number of sex worker complaints involving compensation and working conditions, the unionization effort appears largely precipitated by a dispute over IP rights in erotic content. According to the Independent, Sheri’s brothel workers were presented with a new contract in December that:
included a clause demanding courtesans grant Sheri’s Ranch “irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual” rights to any content they produce while staying at the brothel.
It could be an especially damaging requirement given how many of Nevada’s legal sex workers are also adult film actresses or social media personalities . . . .
Sex workers’ intellectual property rights have become even more crucial to their livelihoods as sites such as OnlyFans have rapidly grown in popularity.
Another interesting part of the story concerns the reluctance of sex workers to “rock the boat,” given the taboo (but legal) status of sex work in Nevada:
She said she and her colleagues had never discussed challenging any of these practices, in part because of the legal fragility of the industry.
“There’s a small but vocal minority of people who think sex work in every form is nonconsensual, that there’s no way to do it ethically,” Jetson said. “I disagree, but we have to be mindful that any pushback to fight for a fair workplace is going to result in that small minority of people loudly saying, ‘Well, then we just have to shut it all down.’”
This too, resonates with what we know about repugnant work more generally. In Repugnant Work, for example, I discuss how the dominant framing of gift exchange and volunteerism in guinea pigging and plasma donation masks familiar conflicts of interest present in any market relationship and may alter the ways in which courts and potential litigants approach the types of contract, antitrust, and other claims that are standard fare in other work settings. Although legal sex work is not typically cast in gift framing, the precarious status of taboo industries affects how participants in those industries approach their interactions with the state, the community, and the law.
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