Michelle Molubi
DARE Project: Examining Ontario labour rights mechanisms towards building sex workers’ capacity for contesting workplace discrimination
Program(s) of Study: Humanities
Project Supervisor: Tuulia Law
I hope our research supports sex workers in their ability to access fair and safe workspaces as well as create means for recourse when they have experienced discrimination.
Project Description:
This project examines legal avenues for sex workers who work for third party-managed businesses – such as strip clubs and erotic massage parlours – to seek redress for workplace discrimination. It is common for such businesses to impose restrictions on hiring, retention, and shift allocation that discriminate against women who do not conform to Eurocentric beauty standards. Research has found that strip clubs and escort agencies discriminate against Black women in particular through limits on how many Black women can be on their roster or work per shift. Additionally, sex workers may be terminated or not hired for other aesthetically-informed and discriminatory reasons including weight, gender presentation (e.g., not hetero-feminine enough) and age. These discriminatory practices have been facilitated through another problematic sex industry tendency: management’s classification of sex workers as independent contractors, which allows businesses to avoid paying wages to workers, who earn their pay from clients per service but are required to adhere to scheduling and perform unpaid tasks, and which also disqualifies them from the protection of the Employment Standards Act. This project will examine previous instances of sex workers contesting these practices in Ontario and compare them to the actions of other comparable in/dependent contractors – in media coverage, OLRB and municipal bylaw enforcement records – in order to sketch the victories, limitations and possibilities for legal redress and intervention against racial and other forms of discrimination and similar problematic workplace practices in the sex industry.The Dean’s Award for Research Excellence (DARE) – Undergraduate enables our students to meaningfully engage in research projects supervised by LA&PS faculty members. Find out more about DARE.