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TUC Women’s Conference 2025: Why you should vote AGAINST Motions 8 and 9

The agenda for the TUC Women’s Conference 2025 is out. It includes two motions (Motion 8 from ASLEF and Motion 9 from GMB) and an amendment (from CWU) calling for full decriminalisation of prostitution.

The conference takes place on 5-7 March 2025. It is a delegate conference, which means that only delegates are allowed to vote. Delegates represent the various unions affiliated to the TUC (Trade Union Congress).

This article goes through the two motions line by line, showing why they are misguided and misleading. We encourage all delegates to vote AGAINST both motions and the CWU amendment.

Each motion consists of five points. We set out each one below in bold, followed by an explanation of why it is misguided, misleading, or dangerous for women and society.

But first we include a section on the elephants in the room: how the mainstreaming of the sex industry is leading to a rise in misogynistic and sexist attitudes among men; and the impact on other workers, particularly women.

Update 7 March 2025: Thanks to women from across the trade union and feminist movements pulling together, both motions were defeated. The results were: Motion 8 (ASLEF): 54 in favour, 93 against, 63 abstained. Motion 9 (GMB/CWU): 55 in favour, 91 against, 67 abstained.

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General resources:

The elephants in the room

The impact on the epidemic of male violence against women and girls (VAWG)

The agenda includes motions and composite motions calling for the tackling of misogyny, sexism and the rise of incel culture, measures to address women’s safety on public transport, and sexual harassment in the workplace, along with better policies for victims of domestic abuse and rape and serious sexual assault.

The mainstreaming of prostitution and pornography (i.e. filmed prostitution) is having a catastrophic impact on men’s behaviours and attitudes. The evidence is now unequivocal that both porn consumption and buying sex are associated with attitudes that underlie men’s verbal and physical aggression towards women, including rape and sexual harassment.

If you don’t believe this, please spend a few minutes reading the reviews that men leave on punter forums about their prostitution encounters. Here are a few examples:

“I could have literally been shagging the pillow and got more response….I’m paying for this and expect a decent service … I can only assume she hates what she does.”

“The main event was like shagging a dead fish (No reaction from her at all).”

“I felt like I was moving a sack of potatoes around the bed… it was like sticking my cock in a corpse.”

Clearly the authors of these reviews are not seeing the women they have paid as full human beings with equal rights as them. Rather they see them as commodities, or objects they can pay to use and abuse, who are then expected to act as if they are enjoying it. These attitudes are not an anomaly. Rather they are the inevitable consequence of prostitution and pornography consumption.

It is inconceivable that such attitudes do not affect how male prostitution users treat the women in their workplaces and elsewhere. This is of extreme concern because we know from history that regarding human beings as less than human, opens the way for abusing them, denying them full human rights and equality, and worse.

Decriminalising prostitution would send out a message saying that buying sex is of no more consequence than paying for a hair cut – and so it will inevitably lead to an expansion of the industry as more men pay for sex more frequently. This will have a catastrophic impact on all women, as more men come to see them as objects of consumption, as servants, as subhuman. As Alexandra Kollontai eloquently said:

“A man who buys the favours of a woman does not see her as a comrade or as a person with equal rights. He sees the woman as dependent upon himself and as an unequal creature of a lower order who is of less worth to the workers’ state. The contempt he has for the prostitute, whose favours he has bought, affects his attitude to all women. The further development of prostitution, instead of allowing for the growth of comradely feeling and solidarity, strengthens the inequality of the relationships between the sexes.” [Emphasis added]

Motions 8 and 9 must therefore be seen to contravene the TUC’s existing policies against sexual harassment and misconduct, and for equality in the workplace, and for safety for women workers and provisions for victims of male violence.

Other impacts on other workers, particularly women

Defining prostitution as a normal job in the law would have many consequences for other workers. If being touched and penetrated by men becomes a normal job in one scenario (e.g. a brothel), what would stop other employers changing the job description of young female employees to include giving blow jobs to important clients?

Prostitution can never conform to health and safety standards. Recognising it in law as a regular job would therefore mean that women involved in it would have to work outside the protection of health and safety regulations. Would this not lead to a slippery slope, where other employers also expect workers to accept dangerous working practices?

Similarly prostitution can never conform to equality norms and anti-sexual harassment laws. Defining it in law as a normal job would therefore set dangerous precedents for all workers.

Delegates need to think through the implications of decriminalising the entire sex industry, as these motions call for.

A more humane solution would be the Nordic Model, which decriminalises selling sex and provides those doing so with support services that include genuine alternatives and routes out, while criminalising all other aspects of the industry.

We therefore urge delegates to vote AGAINST Motions 8 and 9 and the CWU amendment.

Motion: 8. Decriminalisation of Sex Work (ASLEF)

“Conference notes that whilst in opposition the Labour Party put forward an amendment to legislation that saw prostitution redefined as ‘adult sexual exploitation’, a move that if pursued whilst in government would undermine the health and safety of sex workers as well as removing their autonomy.”

The idea that a change of terminology alone would have such extraordinary material consequences is ludicrous. It also reveals a stark lack of understanding of both the risks that prostitution poses to the health and safety of those involved and the reality of most women’s involvement in prostitution. Research consistently reveals that 80-90% of women involved in prostitution want to exit prostitution but cannot see how to do so. This suggests that far from exhibiting autonomy, the vast majority of women involved in prostitution are reluctantly enduring it for want of other options.

Moreover, the use of the “sex work” terminology is misleading. It is a euphemism that was deliberately introduced by lobbyists who wanted to normalise prostitution and change its public image from something seedy and dangerous to something healthy and wholesome. Sadly they have been successful in getting this terminology accepted, with the result that many girls and young women are lured into prostitution, thinking it is akin to waitressing or care work. In addition, the ‘sex work’ term is used for a wide range of activities, many of which do not involve intimate contact, such as selling soiled underwear and phone sex lines, and includes managers and facilitators, i.e. brothel keepers and pimps. This means that many lobbyists who claim to be “sex workers” might never have experienced prostitution per se and might have powerful personal interests in the expansion of the industry because they profit from other people’s prostitution.

“Clients would also be criminalised which is proven to increase the risk of violence for sex workers, the majority of whom are women.”

The claim that criminalising sex buyers increases violence against women involved in prostitution is often made, but is not borne out in practice.

Many studies that make this claim have been shown to be based on extreme ideological bias, and misinterpretation or misuse of data. For example, Amnesty’s report on Norway, the Northern Ireland justice department-sponsored report on Northern Ireland, the Lancet study, and the French Médecins du Monde study.

Criminalising sex buyers is a fundamental part of the Nordic Model, which is the main alternative approach to full decriminalisation. The European Court of Human Rights examined this issue in response to a claim made against the implementation of the Nordic Model law in France. The Court ruled that the alleged negative effects (such as increased violence) of the Nordic Model law were present before it was introduced and that these negative effects are likely to be inherent to prostitution itself.

A review of the key studies on the results of the Nordic Model in the countries in which it has been implemented found that, although all of the studies indicate a very high rate of violence towards the people in prostitution, there is no definitive evidence of any actual increase due to the sex purchase ban. Similarly claims that the sex purchase ban has driven prostitution underground and made it more dangerous are not supported by the research. Rather the evidence underlines the fact that prostitution is always dangerous.

Our own analysis of the murders of women involved in prostitution by pimps and punters provides further evidence for this. In order to facilitate comparison between the countries, we worked with a data scientist to express the annual number of murders of women involved in prostitution in six countries as an average per 100,000 female citizens during the years in which the current legislative framework was in place. The results are shown in the following chart.

This leaves no doubt that the rate of homicide of women involved in prostitution is significantly higher in fully decriminalised New Zealand and legalised Germany and the Netherlands than in the Nordic Model countries of Sweden, Norway and France.

This suggests that the claim that the Nordic Model is more dangerous for women involved in prostitution is false. Rather, this is evidence that the more prostitution there is, the more women are harmed in it – sometimes fatally. All the evidence suggests that legalising or decriminalising the entire industry leads to an increase in its size. Therefore policy and legislation should aim to reduce the size of the industry.

We do not claim that the Nordic Model is safer – because we do not believe that anything can make prostitution safe.

“Conference believes an increase in police powers would lead to a rise in prosecutions. A criminal record for prostitution makes sex workers targets for the police and others in authority to discriminate and deny them their rights. It can mean a greater risk of exploitation, abuse, and other violence and is a barrier to leaving sex work to obtain other employment.”

We absolutely agree that women and others involved in prostitution should not be criminalised for their own prostitution and that criminal records for this make exiting prostitution and rebuilding their lives much more difficult. However, no one is calling for this. In fact people calling for the Nordic Model are just as clear that no one should be criminalised for their own prostitution as those calling for full decriminalisation. This point in the motion is therefore confusing.

It would seem that ASLEF is suggesting that the Nordic Model would criminalise women involved in prostitution. This suggestion is untrue and misleading and, we would argue, unethical.

“Criminalising sex workers or their clients does nothing to address the poverty, homelessness and the cost-of-living crisis that have pushed so many more women, particularly mothers, into sex work.”

As mentioned above, no one is seriously advocating criminalising women involved in prostitution. This begs the question of why ASLEF would suggest that this is something anyone wants. Is this another attempt to mislead people into supporting their motion? If so, it is unethical and unworthy of the trade union movement.

It is true that criminalising sex buyers would not directly address the poverty and homelessness that have pushed so many women into prostitution. However, NOT criminalising buying sex and suggesting that prostitution is just a normal job has many adverse effects on women – both the women involved in prostitution and women as a collective.

When buying sex is legal (as it currently is in most of the UK), it enshrines in law men’s right to buy women for sexual use and abuse. The corollary of this is that a subset of women must be available for this purpose and that men’s right to buy women for sexual use and abuse is more important than women’s right to live free from sexual exploitation.

This is in direct contradiction to a society based on equality between the sexes and tends to lead to the withdrawal of resources from women in favour of resources for men. This is exactly what we have witnessed for more than a decade. The Women’s Budget Group has shown that every single budget since 2010 has favoured men at the expense of women and it estimated that 86% of the savings from the previous Governments’ austerity measures since 2010 were borne by women, with single mums, and disabled, black and Asian women worst affected.

So clearly the current situation of men being free to buy sex has done nothing to address women’s poverty and inequality. In fact we would suggest that it has contributed to the worsening of women’s financial situation both absolutely and relatively to men.

It is far-fetched therefore to suggest that decriminalising the prostitution industry even further than it already is, would magically address women’s poverty. All the evidence suggests the opposite and that once prostitution is officially accepted as normal work under the law, women’s situation will become even worse. Job Centres will send unemployed women down to the local brothel and withdraw benefits if they refuse. And other employers might add giving blow jobs to managers and important clients to the job specification of junior female employees.

“Conference therefore calls upon the TUC Women’s Committee to adopt a policy in favour of full decriminalisation, recognising sex workers as workers and to campaign alongside appropriate organisations to achieve this.”

Full decriminalisation does not simply mean decriminalising everyone involved in prostitution. It also:

New Zealand

New Zealand passed the Prostitution Reform Act (PRA) in 2003, which introduced fully decriminalised prostitution. It has now been in place for just over 20 years and it is claimed by lobbyists and even the New Zealand government that there has been a decrease in the number of people involved, that it’s safer for women, that women can refuse clients and particular services, that brothels have regular health inspections, and that condom use is compulsory. These are the claims. However, the data in the New Zealand Government’s own assessments does not support a single one of these claims.

The data actually shows that after the law was passed there was a rapid increase in the size of the industry, violence and coercion remain rife, women can seldom refuse clients or specific acts, unprotected sex is common because men “always or nearly always” ask for it, and there were only 11 brothel inspections in 12 years even though more than 1,000 brothel licenses were granted during that time.

Another claim is that there is no sex trafficking in New Zealand. It is true that there have been no prosecutions for sex trafficking since decriminalisation has been in force. However, there were 133 recorded cases that meet the international definition of sex trafficking in the 9 years to 2011 and without doubt many more since then and that have never been recorded.

Under the PRA, sex crimes against children are considered minor offences comparable to alcohol violations. So most sexual exploitation of children also goes unregistered.

For more on this, see:

We urge delegates to vote AGAINST this motion (Motion 8).

Motion: 9. Sex work is still work (GMB)  

“Conference notes that in 2024/25, sex work is still not fully decriminalised. Whatever society’s moral judgement on those who work in the industry, we cannot fail to recognise that workers without rights or proper union organisation are left vulnerable to unscrupulous practices and exploitation.”

We agree that workers without rights or proper union organisation are left vulnerable to unscrupulous practices and exploitation. But does prostitution fit the definition of “work” or is it exploitation? If the latter, why would a trade union want to regularise it rather than seeking to abolish it?

As we mentioned earlier, after detailed and dispassionate investigation, the European Court of Human Rights concluded that violence is inherent to prostitution itself.

The data on the physical and psychological harms of prostitution is now overwhelming. There is no way of making it conform to health and safety norms. Many of the activities intrinsic to prostitution would be considered sexual harassment, assault or even torture in any other context.

Prostitution doesn’t even serve a useful social function. As Chelsea Geddes, who suffered two decades in New Zealand’s brutal prostitution system said, “All we’re producing in the sex industry is male orgasms on the backs of human misery”. It has been documented as increasing men’s sense of sexual entitlement and propensity to be violent to women and girls in the general population – which is a very real concern now that we are experiencing a recognised epidemic of male violence against women and girls.

When an industry cannot be made safe, especially when there are safe alternatives or it serves no useful social purpose, ethical trade unions call for its closure and the redeployment of workers to other industries and roles. This is exactly the approach of the Nordic Model.

While there are some organisations that claim to be “sex work” trade unions, there is no evidence of them fighting for women involved in prostitution. Instead they act like trade associations that fight for the interests of third parties who profit from women’s prostitution.

It is therefore bizarre that the GMB is fighting not only for the continuation of prostitution, but also for an approach that would lead to it being considered a normal job and a rapid expansion of the industry.

“Sex workers are particularly at risk due to laws that mean they are often forced to work alone, in isolated areas and without the support of security, police and other services that could provide safety.”

In the UK, it is legal for women to be involved in prostitution in a brothel, although running or assisting in the running of a brothel is an offence. However, CPS guidance makes it clear that prosecutions should focus on those with a major involvement in running the brothel and not women who sell sex there and who help with minor tasks like answering the phone. The guidance explicitly states that “those who sell sex should not be routinely prosecuted as offenders”.

Our research shows that the police very rarely prosecute brothel keeping. In 2018-2022, there were only about 10 prosecutions for brothel keeping a year on average in the whole of England and Wales.

All of this means that in practice women currently face negligible risk of being prosecuted for selling sex in brothels. although, shamefully, the police are known to arrest migrant women for immigration offences during police raids. However, full decriminalisation alone would not change this.

However, working in a brothel does not keep women safe. Of the 124 murders and attempted murders of prostituted women in Germany by pimps and punters from January 2000 to July 2017 that were known and recorded on the Sex Industry Kills, 50% took place in legal “prostitution apartments,” where women operate in small groups. Working with other women in an apartment did not keep these women safe.

A decriminalised street prostitution zone was introduced in Holbeck, Leeds, in October 2014. The claim was that it would make the women safe. In practice the reality was very different and it was eventually closed down in June 2021, mostly as a result of some brilliant campaigning by local residents whose lives had been blighted by the scheme. There was one murder, several attempted murders, countless rapes and sexual assaults, and relentless harassment of local women and girls by kerb crawlers during that time.

This shows that not only did decriminalisation not make the women safe, but also that the impact on the local community was severe. When street prostitution is decirminalised, the police tend to focus on the women, because they are more visible, and not on the punters, meaning that even though selling sex on the street was theoretically decriminalised, in practice the women were arrested and served with ASBO type orders, while the pimps and punters got off scot free.

This reveals the inherent contradictions in the full decriminalisation ideology. Prostitution is not a private matter: it has a profound impact on the community. This begs the question of what drives those promoting full decriminalisation and why would the GMB want to push it on the trade union movement which represents women as well as men.

A much more humane approach to street prostitution is the Nordic Model-style programme instigated in Ipswich after a punter murdered five young women involved in street prostitution in 2006. They stopped targeting the women with criminal sanctions and instead provided them with substantial help to exit prostitution and rebuild their lives. They used the kerb crawling legislation and number plate recognition technology to implement a zero-tolerance approach to kerb crawling. Within a few years more or less all of the women had been helped out of prostitution and had rebuilt their lives, men changed their behaviour, and street prostitution no longer existed in the town. An evaluation by the University of East Anglia found that it was successful and ultimately saved public money.

And yet ASLEF and GMB would have you believe that this approach is more dangerous for women.

“The workforce is predominantly working class women, often just trying to survive or support their children in a poverty stricken world. Decriminalisation is an ethical way to diminish the risk of exploitation and provide a pathway to justice when workers face abuse.”

The idea that decriminalisation would “diminish the risk of exploitation and provide a pathway to justice” is based on a profound misunderstanding of how the prostitution system works. This is inexcusable.

Decriminalisation sends out a strong message that there is nothing wrong with paying for sex acts and nothing wrong with third parties profiting from that. This inevitably leads to more men buying sex more frequently, and more people moving into pimping and running brothels. Pimping is extremely lucrative. Recent research suggests that pimps and traffickers in the UK can gain around £20,000 revenue per month for each woman they pimp – more than many people earn in a year.

But there aren’t enough women to fill this increased demand, because women who have genuine choices don’t generally choose to go into prostitution. This means that those who want to cash in on this extra money have to use coercion, force, trickery, or taking advantage of (mostly) young women’s vulnerabilities to recruit and retain women and girls in prostitution. This fits the United Nations definition of sex trafficking.

This would inevitably INCREASE the risk of exploitation of girls and women, particularly marginalised girls and young women – including the very working-class women that the GMB purports to care about.

Moreover, decriminalisation positions prostitution as a normal job, and so the harms, abuse and violence that are intrinsic to it are transformed into workplace hazards, which the woman is required to protect herself from. This is itself a form of victim blaming and reduces the likelihood of any form of justice, as Chelsea Geddes has testified happened in New Zealand under its decriminalisation model.

“The TUC and affiliated unions are here to ensure every worker has access to fair wages, to a safe workplace, to justice, to life. Sex workers are calling for decriminalisation, and it is our duty to stand alongside them.”

One can’t help wondering what planet the GMB lives on, because they appear to have little or no understanding of how the prostitution system actually works and that it can never conform to standard health and safety practices and equality norms. It is recognised by the United Nations as incompatible with the human right to dignity. It places women’s very life in jeopardy and positions women as subordinate to men. Prostitution’s existence is an inherent injustice and violation of women’s right to equality with men.

There is an extremely well-funded and vocal lobby calling for full decriminalisation and some of those involved in this claim to be sex workers, although as we explained earlier, some may not have experienced prostitution per se and most are untypical of the vast majority of women involved in prostitution. However, there are also many survivors of prostitution who are vehemently opposed to decriminalisation and who campaign for the Nordic Model. Generally these groups are unfunded – because the lobby for full decrim has captured most of the big funding bodies (including the Open Society Foundation and its many subsidiaries, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Mama Cash, the Ford Foundation, and many of the UN bodies) and they do not generally provide funding to organisations working in this arena that do not support full decriminalisation. And of course the pimps and pornographers who also help fund the full decriminalisation lobby do not fund those who support the Nordic Model, just as turkeys don’t vote for Christmas.

As a result of these forces and the general capture of the trade unions by the lobby for full decriminalisation, the voices of survivors of prostitution are often excluded from the debate. It is beyond time that this should change.

It is beholden on the trade union movement to listen to all sides and to use some basic due diligence in assessing the vested interests involved. It is disturbing to witness the GMB’s failure to do this.

“We call upon the TUC Women’s Committee to adopt a policy position of full decriminalisation of sex work, work alongside organisations such as Decrim Now to lobby the government, and work with affiliates to organise sex workers across the country.”

As explained above, full decriminalisation would be a disaster for women and girls. The trade union movement must listen to all sides of this debate, including women who have exited prostitution and are no longer trapped within its coercive control.

We urge delegates to vote AGAINST this motion (Motion 9) and the CWU amendment.

CWU Amendment:

“Add at the end: Workers in the sex industry, the majority of whom are women, are stigmatised by society and denied basic human, civil and labour rights. They need our support to fight against criminalisation, hypocrisy, prejudice, violence and exploitation. We therefore call on the TUC Women’s Committee to support affiliates organising sex workers and to campaign for the decriminalisation of sex work.”

Prostitution is recognised by the United Nations as a violation of human rights. It can never conform to even the most basic understand of decent work. It is intrinsically violent and exploitative. It has not place in a modern democratic society. And furthermore, the is a large and growing movement of women who have lived experience of prostitution who campaign against decriminalisation of the industry. We therefore urge delegates to vote AGAINST this amendment.

Further resources

Embedded video: Why the labour and trade union movement should support the Nordic Model

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