The other I came across an interesting article about the legal evolution of prostitution in Belgium. Apparently, in a move to protect and give some right to sex workers, the government passed a new labor law that will allow sex workers to obtain employment contracts from their pimps. These employment contracts will oblige these same pimps to provide the workers with health insurance, pension, unemployment benefits, holidays and maternity leave.
Now, I have already written about my views regarding prostitution (porn and prostitution, January 20, 2023), certainly the hypocrisy with respect to porn, but I must admit some of the details of this law seem peculiar.
To begin with, the law classifies prostitutes as hospitality workers. I assume then that by this measure, the entire prostitution industry would qualify to be grouped as hospitality industry, and I presume brothels will be grouped in the same category as hotels and restaurants.
Another peculiar aspect of the law is the protection of the law for workers who refuse to have sex with a client. Apparently, according to the law, the pimps, who have to be licensed by the government to be able to issue employment contracts, must allow their ‘employees’ to refuse sex for any reason. And that is where things get a bit twisted, but I must say, coherent.
You see, in line with the right for the sex worker to refuse sex, comes the pimp’s business protection. Can she refuse sex indefinitely without the pimp having any recourse? Well, the answer is no. Just as the sex workers have rights, any business-friendly environment has to give some rights to the employers. So the legislation stipulates that if the worker refuses sex, or stops sex, more than 10 times in six months, their manager－pimp－can open a labor dispute and involve a government mediator! Imagine that!
So Belgium will soon add a new competence to their labor dispute mediation and I would love to be a fly on the wall of the office where the mediator is sitting with a pimp and a prostitute, and after reading the case, turns to the sex worker and asks why he/she refuses for the eleventh time to have sex with a client in the past six months!
Paris, May 23, 2024
Zeejay