May Day Is for All Workers — Including Sex Workers

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Every year on May 1st, the world celebrates International Workers’ Day—also known as May Day. It’s a time to honor labor movements, working-class resilience, and the ongoing fight for better wages, rights, and protections. But somehow, year after year, there’s a conspicuous absence from many of those rallies, marches, and speeches: sex workers.

At SWOP Behind Bars, we believe Workers’ Day is sex workers’ day, too. We are workers. We labor. We provide services. We pay rent. We pay taxes. We take care of families. And yet, our labor is too often criminalized, stigmatized, erased, or made invisible by the very movements that claim to fight for “all workers.”

Let’s be clear: sex work is work—whether it’s happening online, in clubs, on the street, or behind prison walls. Sex workers are massage workers, cam models, dancers, escorts, porn performers, full-service workers, and more. The diversity of our labor is vast, and so is the oppression we face. We deserve fair working conditions, protections from violence and exploitation, and the right to organize without fear of arrest or surveillance.

May Day has radical roots. It commemorates the Haymarket affair of 1886—a violent crackdown against labor activists fighting for the 8-hour workday. Many of those activists were immigrants, anarchists, and people pushed to the margins. Sound familiar? The same systems that brutalized labor organizers in the 19th century are alive today in the raids, arrests, and discrimination sex workers face around the world.

We’ve been part of the labor movement from the beginning—even when they didn’t want us there. From the sex worker-led unionization efforts in the 1970s, to today’s organizing around decriminalization and mutual aid, our fight is a labor fight.

This May Day, we demand inclusion:

• Include sex workers in labor organizing.

• Protect incarcerated workers, including those criminalized for survival sex.

• Acknowledge the economic reality that brings people into sex work—and stop pretending it doesn’t count.

• Honor the labor of trans sex workers, migrant workers, Black and Brown workers, and disabled workers—those who face multiple forms of marginalization.

You can’t build worker solidarity while leaving sex workers out in the cold. Not if you’re serious about justice.

So, as we gather on May 1st to lift up workers’ voices, don’t forget the workers who are too often silenced. Sex workers belong in labor movements, and labor movements are stronger when we’re all in the fight together.

Happy Workers’ Day—from all of us at SWOP Behind Bars.