Britain’s trade union movement is moving, unevenly but noticeably, toward treating sex work as work. In May 2026, members of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) voted to affiliate to Decrim Now, back full decriminalisation of sex work, and campaign against the End Demand — or Nordic — model. It is the latest large union to put the issue on the formal agenda.
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PCS is not alone. A growing list of unions already hold policy positions for decriminalisation, among them ASLEF, BFAWU, the CWU, GMB, Equity, UCU, the RCN, the BMJ, and the IWW. USDAW members have also passed support for decrim. Inside UNISON, Britain’s largest union, a campaign group — UNISON 4 Decrim — is organising to change national policy, with motions submitted to conference and a visible presence on the floor.
The institutional argument is straightforward. Criminalisation blocks the ordinary tools of workplace organising: the ability to report violence without risking arrest, to bargain collectively, to challenge unsafe conditions, and to access labour protections that other workers take for granted. Decrim Now and allied organisers put it simply: under criminalisation, sex workers cannot organise like other workers. Under decriminalisation, they can.
That is not theoretical. The Sex Workers’ Union exists as branch 600 of the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU). Venue-based work — strip clubs in particular — has been easier to organise because those workplaces are already recognised in law. The union has secured wins there. It has also organised workers on online platforms, with mixed but real progress, and has moved toward industrial action against platform practices that members say leave them exposed.
BFAWU itself has voted to support full decriminalisation, amplify the Sex Workers’ Union, and oppose further criminalisation. That matters because the parent union is not a niche advocacy group. It is a traditional industrial union making space for a workforce the law still treats as a policing problem.
Workers for Decrim, the sister organising effort, is pushing the same case across the wider movement: open communication channels between the Sex Workers’ Union and other unions, share campaigns, treat solidarity as a two-way street. Sex workers, organisers note, already show up on other picket lines. The ask is that the rest of the movement show up for them.
The policy fight in the UK remains contested. End Demand approaches — criminalise the buyer, “support” the seller to exit — still have institutional backers. Decrim Now and the unions aligned with it argue that model fails on the evidence: it drives work underground, weakens screening, and makes reporting harder. Full decriminalisation, on the New Zealand model and now partly reflected in places such as Belgium’s labour-rights framework, is the standard they organise around.
None of this is a substitute for legislation. Parliament has not delivered national decrim. What the union votes do is change the industrial landscape sex workers organise inside. Each affiliation and each motion makes it harder to pretend the question is only moral or only carceral. It becomes a workplace question — safety, poverty, disability, benefits that do not cover rent, and the right to organise without the law treating the job itself as the offence.
PCS has now joined that list. Others are still being pushed. The Sex Workers’ Union is already inside the building.