Sex Work Strike - May 23rd - We Strike Back!
Since our first meeting in 2019, we have been gathering monthly to discuss our working conditions. The SWAC has been a space for venting and whoreganizing around abusive management – unfair and arbitrary dismissals, unsanitary working conditions, harassment and discrimination from management, violence in our workplace – we’ve had enough! We think it’s time to fight back!
In the winter of 2024, SWAC members got together to strategize how we might be able to mobilize our coworkers who share workspaces. For most of us, this meant strip clubs or massage parlours. We decided that we would begin with a zine, which some of you may be familiar with, “Sex Worker’s Unite! A Manifesto About Workplace Whoreganization.” The zine was intended as a digestible “how-to” guide on workplace organization as sex workers, and we viewed this as the first step to further discussion on whoreganization. We launched the zine the following spring of 2025, during which we hosted a Sex Worker’s Assembly to discuss grievances in our workplaces.
Despite the event’s successes we received very valid critiques that said we should have an outlet for people to put their energy towards, it was clear that people were seeking an organizing effort that they could channel their anger and passion into. This was an exciting moment for us as it seemed people were keen on bringing their individual resistance into a collective movement. The summer and fall of 2025 was spent tracing out what this collective movement could look like. We knew there was a lot of work to do before we could expect clubs and parlours to individually form autonomous unions and vote on whether each workplace would participate in actions or not, though this is a model that we aspire to. We wanted to begin with 1. community building and 2. a call to action.
This is how we landed on the idea of monthly workshops leading up to a call for a strike during the 2026 Formula 1 week in Montréal (also known as Montréal Grand Prix), in conjunction with regular SWAC scheduling such as our monthly meetings and the annual magazine launch. The winter and spring of 2026 are packed full of SWAC events that are centered around meeting other sex workers interested in whoreganizing and discussions that strategize how we will do this in our individual workplaces. Already we are seeing our coworkers inspired and strategizing past F1. The strike planned for F1 is only one goal in a much larger and longer struggle for sex workers to be recognized as workers and provided basic human and worker’s rights. We hope that you will join us in the first steps of demanding the rights we deserve!
The first step is to break free from the idea that we are self-employed. The truth is that we have an employer and he owes us safe working conditions like in any other jobs!
The bar fee is seen by many dancers as a symbol of freedom. You pay to work, and in exchange, you’re the master of your own schedule. But this is becoming less and less true–if it ever was. Many bars now require new dancers to work a weekday before they’re allowed to work weekends. You don’t get to choose your hours and you’re often required to stay until closing time, at 3 a.m. One club in Montreal even demands that dancers book themselves several months in advance. Calling in sick is also difficult in many bars. We’re far from the idea of self-employment where you can work whenever you want.
The reality is that we’re clearly trapped in an employer/employee power dynamic, and the bar fee model benefits only the bosses. Indeed, they have every incentive to bring in as many dancers as possible each night to maximize their profits. As for our safety, our employers show very little concern and leave us to handle it on our own.
In fact, we weren’t always required to pay a bar service fee; it wasn’t until the 2000’s that paying to work became a reality for dancers in Montreal. As the years go on, this fee, arbitrary since its inception, keeps increasing. With strip clubs becoming less and less popular among the general population, it becomes obvious that we are keeping the clubs afloat with our own money, despite being entirely dispensable to management.
This is a first step toward bringing back the hourly wage that our predecessors lost. The goal is to break free from the illusion of self-employment and hold employers accountable not just for wages, but for everything that comes with them: workplace safety, hygiene standards, basic rights like sick leave, etc.
As strippers, we are considered independent contractors, this means that on paper we are treated the same as, say, an independent plumber that you would hire for your home repairs. This plumber, also considered an independent contractor, receives their income directly from the customer, makes their own schedule, determines how long their shifts are, provides their own equipment, and can work for multiple clients at once. Now you may be beginning to see how a stripper’s status as an independent contractor does not align with the work itself. As strippers we are responsible for the demands of our management, if they say we work three shifts a week, we do, if they say we show full nude on stage, we do, if they say our heels are too short, we buy taller ones, because if we don’t we will lose our jobs. The independent contractor plumber is responsible to no one but themself, while the independent contractor stripper is responsible to club management, at the expense of their job.
Our demands are all in line with a goal of achieving worker status as strippers, that is the recognition that we do have an employer/employee power dynamic with our managements, and should therefore be provided the benefits that other workers get, such as sick leave, a livable wage (on top of the money we make during dances), and a generally safe and comfortable working environment. We believe that the abolition of the bar fee is a crucial first step in our efforts in becoming recognized as workers.
A strike is when workers refuse to work as a means to harness leverage for job negotiations with their employer. Very simply, a collective of workers deciding not to show up to work until their demands are met is considered a strike. Although striking is often considered controversial among formal unions, it is ultimately a very effective strategy when workers are well-prepared and autonomous. Strikes have been a crucial step in every strip-club unionization effort to date, both for The Lusty Lady and Star Garden.
Taking the product or service away from the employer is the crucial leverage guaranteed by a strike while in negotiations with management. As the dancers from The Lusty Lady in San Francisco put it “[Your boss is] totally powerless if the ‘product’ he’s trying to sell is outside the club carrying signs instead of inside bumping and grinding”. If clients really came to the strip club just for a drink, they would be at a regular bar.
In the context of a general sex work strike we are inspired by the 2018 Uber drivers strike in the US after which Uber drivers were eventually able to achieve the status of “worker” instead of “independent contractor.” After the organizing efforts of many, in February 2021 the Supreme Court ruled that drivers were workers and not independent contractors, and would receive a minimum wage and worker benefits such as parental leave, sick leave, holiday pay and a pension plan. The 2018 Uber strike was the catalyst for this discourse to take place and eventually, after the drivers continued efforts over years, they were able to attain their original demands.
As we have said before, a general sex work strike is one step among many in achieving our demands. We don’t expect this strike to win us a wage or the decriminalization of sex work overnight, to think so would be quite simply idealistic. However, in the context of the bar fee especially, as we have explained above, it is a very effective technique. This strike is a perfectly plausible means of pressuring your management to drop the bar fee, all it takes is you and your coworkers refusing to work until you don’t have to pay the bar fee. After May 23rd, you and your coworkers may decide to show up to work and refuse the bar fee, or simply keep striking until your management agrees to drop the bar fee.
We think the Grand Prix is the best time to strike. The clubs are at their busiest, making it the most lucrative period of the year for our boss. This is our chance to threaten that income and affect them when it hurts the most. During this time, despite management making more money, dancers have to put up with a list of new rules, increased bar fees, overbooking and generally worse working conditions.
Even though some people make good money during the Grand Prix, the fact that our bosses schedule more workers than usual makes it harder for us to earn. This overbooking happens without the needed extra security to look out for these workers, resulting in increased violence against the dancers during these busy and chaotic times. Additionally, bar fees are increased exorbitantly during F1 and new arbitrary rules are often heavily enforced with exploitative penalty fees attached. In 2025, one club in Montréal charged $110 per night for the five nights of F1. At an average of 60 girls a night (which is on the low end) this club made approximately $33 000 alone on the dancers walking through the door. This is not including late fees and penalty fees that these dancers may have been forced to pay as well. The bar fee model is an exploitative practice that only benefits the bosses.
F1 is not only a symbolically important time for a sex work strike, but also a materially important time. We must disrupt these exploitative labour practices where our management employs them the heaviest, and profits from them the most. It is up to us as dancers to fight these managerial abuses collectively and fight for the working conditions that we deserve!
It’s also the time of the year that we will get the most media coverage! It’s become common practice for sex worker exclusionary feminists–also know as SWERFS–to use F1 to promote their anti-sex work agendas and saviorism. Our strike is the occasion to bring up a counter-discourse that sex workers have agency and power as people and workers. While we acknowledge the violences in our workplaces, we believe that we should fight back through workers’ action, rather than letting the state decide for us.
No! In fact, we are actively working on specific demands for massage parlour workers in conjunction with our current demands for strip clubs. Additionally, as strippers we encompass a variety of fields within the sex work industry whether that includes online work or full-service work. This is not true for all of us, however there is a collection of us who have other jobs within the industry. All of this is to say that our goal is for all sex workers to be organized against those that profit off of us. Whether it is online sex workers against their platforms or escorts against their agencies, we dream of a world in which all sex workers take back their rights as workers!
The consequences of striking are very real, but not acting alone can be essential! By organizing together from the start and connecting with workers in other workplaces, we ensure that solidarity actions can be taken in the event of retaliation. This is our best protection against employer pushback. Both strip clubs that unionized in the U.S., the Lusty Lady and the Star Garden, have seen the more militant workers fired for their actions. While stressful for the targeted workers, it was that very injustice that created solidarity and led to the first collective agreements, furthering the goals of the movement. That solidarity allowed the fired workers to get their jobs back!
So, in short, yes there may be consequences for striking, if there were no consequences then we would have been doing this a long time ago! At the end of the day, going up against our employers involves risk, and sometimes there are consequences that follow. However, that is all the more reason to fight back stronger and harder collectively. We must not back down in the face of our management’s fear tactics and union busting techniques! After all, we all know that without strippers there would be no strip clubs.
First, you have to think of who your friends and allies are in the club, who do you trust? This might be only two to three of your coworkers and that’s okay! Next, you and your allies should strategize on how to mobilize your coworkers for the strike, which means getting your coworkers on board with the demands and the strike itself. This process usually involves a lot of trust building with coworkers and opening up to each other about issues you have in the workplace. Eventually, you may reach a point with coworkers during which you feel comfortable to bring up the strike and the demands attached to it.
Ultimately, each club may want to participate in the strike differently, or have their own unique twist on their demands. SWAC is merely providing spaces and activities for striking sex workers and their allies to participate in on the day of the strike, in addition to support in your mobilizing efforts leading up to and those that may come after the strike. If you and your coworkers do not feel prepared or ready to bring demands individually to the bosses but still wish to engage in the strike, that is okay! We strongly encourage people to aim for bringing their demands to management for May 23rd, however, we also understand that mobilizing timelines will look different for each workplace.
As mentioned before we also specifically choose the time of F1 to make our demands public through media coverage, we also have other strategies to ensure that our demands will anonymously reach club management regardless and stir discourse on these topics. If F1 is not the time for your workplace to bring these demands to your bosses as a worker collective then we hope that it is the catalyst for more of your coworkers to jump on board and feel comfortable for any future action that could bring these demands forward.
On the other hand, your mobilizing efforts may be timely and you and your coworkers may already be strategizing on the best way to bring your demands to management, and/or what you plan to do following May 23rd if these demands aren’t met. However, your mobilizing efforts may be looking, we wish you the best of luck in this struggle alongside us. We are your coworkers and friends and we are actively mobilizing in our own workplaces with the goal of safer working conditions for everyone.
Please come to SWAC for any mobilizing tools (flyers, posters, etc.) or advice that you might need, we are here to help! Join us on May 23rd to disrupt the sex work industry and call for sex worker solidarity in the face of exploitative management. This work has proven to each and every one of us that we are incredibly strong and capable, and as a collective we have the potential to be unstoppable. Sex workers of the world, unite!
On May 23rd, don’t show up to work and encourage your co-workers to join us for strike activities. More details to come!
To get mobilization material, DM us or email us.