Perry Work Report, May 23, 2014

May 23, 2014

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Canadian Dimension Special Issue on the Future of the Labour Movement

"The organizations workers have developed for their economic defense -- unions -- have suffered an historic defeat. Union renewal in the form of adding a 'class sensibility,' with all this implies, to the sectionalist foundation of unions, is a central precondition for broader social change."

Starting Points for Union Renewal:

  • "Education is inseparable from activism, from initiating or participating in campaigns that serve as apprenticeships for developing skills but also for raising larger issues in a concrete way and recruiting others to such discussions
  • A priority is to bring class into all of our analysis, education and strategizing. This involves a broad notion of class. Class does not stop at the workplace but is experienced in the community -- not just as alliances with others but as other dimensions of our lives. The community is an increasingly important site of class struggle. And class does not stop with unions but extends to all those not able to live off their capital assets (union and non-union workers, the unemployed, the poor).
  • The renewal of unions will revolve around bringing a class sensibility into strategic thinking.
  • Public-sector unions will have to become the clear leaders in the fight for defending and expanding social services. This is not a matter of spin but of restructuring all priorities -- including bargaining -- to address this priority.
  • Private-sector unions will have to lead in the fight for jobs (a contradiction for unions is that their function revolves around the compensation of workers while their members’ main concern today is having a job). Concessions have failed to provide job security and in the process have only weakened unions. Fighting for jobs means challenging corporate power, not reinforcing it.
  • Bringing more workers into unions requires seeing this as being about building the working class, not just getting more members and dues for a particular union. The breakthroughs in major sectors can only come through cooperation across unions and strategies based on what Jane McAlevey calls 'whole-worker' mobilizing (respect for the potentials of workers to learn and strategize, and building on workers’ lives and relationships outside the workplace as well as in it).”

Canadian Dimension, May 21, 2014: "Beyond the impasse of Canadian labour: union renewal, political renewal,” by Sam Gindin

"We are delighted to follow on the heels of May Day with a special issue on the future of the labour movement, State of the Unions. In an historic debate, leading trade union figures including Jerry Dias and Mary Shortall respond to charges that the labour movement is not drawing lines in the tar sands."

Canadian Dimension, Volume 48, Issue 3, May/June 2014: “State of the unions”

Sign up to receive Canadian Dimension’s free e-newsletter here.

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Why Unions Matter in Alberta

"If you want to know why ‘Alberta is now by far the most unequal province in Canada,’ a report released Wednesday [May 21, 2014] by the Parkland Institute sums it up."

"‘Due to exceptional increases in income for the richest 1% of Albertans, while the incomes of the rest of the population have virtually stagnated, Alberta is now the most unequal province in the country,’ the report concludes. ‘These changes coincided and are closely associated with the declining strength of unions in the province.’”

PressProgress, May 21, 2014: “6 charts that show why Alberta is the ‘most unequal province in Canada’”

“Some of the report’s key findings include: 

  • measured in terms of economic performance, wage growth in Alberta has been far lower than in other provinces with higher unionization rates; 
  • women and young workers fare much better in unionized environments; 
  • high unionization rates also put upward pressure on wages for non-union workers; 
  • unions play a key role in improving worker safety through education, worker empowerment, and government lobbying; 
  • there is a strong correlation between falling unionization rates and growing income inequality in Alberta.”

Parkland Institute, May 21, 2014: “On the Job: Why Unions Matter in Alberta,” by David Campanella, Bob Barnetson, Angella MacEwen

You can download the full report here (58 pages, PDF) or a summary here (1 page, PDF).

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BC Teachers: Pay Cut Threatened, Layoff Notices Begin, and Now a Lock Out

"An escalating teachers’ labour dispute in B.C. is set to become even more confrontational, with the employer announcing a partial lockout beginning next Monday [May 26, 2014]."

The Globe and Mail, May 21 2014: British Columbia to lock out teachers beginning Monday,” by Wendy Stueck

"The B.C. Public School Employer’s Association is threatening to cut teachers’ pay by five per cent in retaliation for the limited job action teachers started last month.”

"The ‘stick’ comes only a day after Education Minister Peter Fassbender offered the ‘carrot’ of a reduced contract term -- six years instead of the 10 years government had been demanding."

"Fassbender also offered teachers a pro-rated $1,200 signing bonus if an agreement were to be reached before the end of the school year."

CBC News, May 16, 2014: ”B.C. teachers paycut threatened over limited job action”

The Globe and Mail, May 16 2014: “B.C. teachers face wage cut if contract not signed by end of June,” by Alexandra Posadzki

"It happens every spring: Dozens of B.C. public-school teachers are laid off as part of a juggling exercise in which school districts adjust their payrolls to correspond with projected budgets and enrolments for the next academic year."

"By September, many have been rehired."

"This year, the process has been even more disruptive than usual. Hundreds of teachers, including 632 in Coquitlam, have received layoff notices. Numbers are still coming in from the province’s 60 school districts, but the total number of layoffs is expected to be 'unprecedented,' according to the B.C. Teachers’ Federation."

The Globe and Mail, May 19 2014: “‘Unprecedented’ number of B.C. teachers receive layoff notices,” by Wendy Stueck

BC Teachers Federation website

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Temporary Foreign Worker Program: An Overview and Mapping Approvals

Canada: Everything You Need to Know About Temporary Foreign Workers

"One of the hottest policy debates in Parliament is over the federal government’s rules on allowing non-Canadians to come into the country temporarily for work -- an issue that touches on both immigration and employment. The Temporary Foreign Worker Program has gone through many changes in recent years and is currently under review by the government after allegations of abuse. Here’s what you need to know."

The Globe and Mail’s Sources:

C.D. Howe Institute: Temporary Foreign Workers in Canada: Are They Really Filling Labour Shortages?
Employment and Social Development Canada Labour Market Opinion 
Statistics Citizenship and Immigration Facts and Figures 2012

The Globe and Mail, May 2, 2014: “Everything you need to know about temporary foreign workers,” by Bill Curry

Mapping Temporary Foreign Worker Program Approvals

"Toronto restaurants, corporations big and small, law firms, strip joints, public institutions and charities -- they’re all on a new website that shows employers that have received permission from the government to hire temporary foreign workers.”

"The website, NTFW.ca, launched a map of Toronto this week. Created by Vancouverite Rohana Rezel, it gives Torontonians the first easy way to look up employers and find out whether they’ve been approved to hire a temporary foreign worker.”

Maps of Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, and Newfoundland are also available.

“Rezel plans to make NTWF.ca ‘self-sustaining’ by allowing companies to pay $20 to be on a list of 'Patriotic' employers who haven’t sought permission to hire TFWs...”

Metro News, May 16, 2014: “Website maps temporary foreign worker program approvals in Toronto,” by Jessica Smith Cross

CBC News, May 8, 2014: “Map of temporary foreign workers in B.C., Alberta goes viral”

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Food Fight

Food Fight: Rising Income Disparity and the Struggle for Higher Wages

On Thursday, May 15, 2014 a group of workers called Florida Fight for 15 protested in front of a Tampa McDonald’s. The employees have “joined together to campaign for a $15-per-hour minimum wage and the ability to unionize. Thousands of fast-food employees from restaurants such as McDonald’s Corp., Wendy’s Co. and Burger King Worldwide Inc. in more than 150 cities in the U.S., and almost 100 others across the world, in places as far as Japan, Africa and the Caribbean, also participated.”

"The discontent of these workers reflects the rising income inequality that has swept through the U.S. labour market in the past 30 years, and the risks this gap could pose around the globe. A global risk report from the World Economic Forum this year found income disparity the ‘most likely risk to cause an impact on a global scale in the next decade.’”

"Canadian fast-food employees weren’t part of the international event, but workers also struggle with low-paying jobs. For the past four years, more than 1 million people have worked for minimum wage or less, according to Statistics Canada data. In 2013, employees in that bracket made up 6.7 per cent of the work force, and there were almost twice as many workers in these jobs as there were in 2000. Accommodation and food services is the lowest-paid industry group in Canada."

The Globe and Mail, May 16, 2014: “Food fight: Rising income disparity and the struggle for higher wages,” by Jacqueline Nelson

The Globe and Mail, May 16, 2014: “Fast food workers walk off jobs in protest of low pay" [video, runs 1:53]

The Globe and Mail, May 15, 2014: “In pictures: U.S. fast-food workers stage job action for higher pay”

Belabored Podcast #52: Fast Food Local, with Tsedeye Gebreselassie

"In the latest escalation of the low-wage workers’ movement, fast food workers went out on strike around the world this week, staging actions in a reported 230 cities in thirty-three countries. But though their problems may be global, the solutions often come locally. On that note, Sarah and Michelle speak with Tsedeye Gebreselassie, a staff attorney at the National Employment Law Project, about her research on low-wage work, local minimum wage ordinances, and why it’s important for workers to lead this struggle."

"We also report on miners’ deaths abroad and at home, teachers’ continuing resistance to the high-stakes testing regime, and unionizing workers at JFK airport. Finally, for ‘Argh,’ we take a look at the responses to Thomas Piketty’s best-selling book on inequality and think about women, art, and domestic work."

Dissent, May 16, 2014: “Belabored Podcast #52: Fast Food Local, with Tsedeye Gebreselassie,” by Sarah Jaffe and Michelle Chen

You can also download the podcast by clicking here.

Check out the full Belabored archive here.

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Don't Spy on Us

"Welcome to the horror show that is the ‘internet of things’ -- hyper-intelligent software, vulnerable hardware... and a whole new level of privacy invasion."

"The ‘internet of things’ is turning into Silicon Valley’s latest mania. At first glance, it is a trend with great appeal, enough to become something more than a trend and a true revolution: a world in which everything we touch and use has an embedded intelligence and memory of its own, and all of it is connected by way of digital networks."

"What’s missing from this rosy scenario? Plenty -- because security and privacy seem to be mostly an afterthought as we embed and use technology in our physical devices. Which means the internet of things could easily turn into a horror show."

The Guardian, May 13 2014: “In the future, the robots may control you, and Silicon Valley will control them,” by Dan Gillmor

"There is nothing amusing about what Edward Snowden revealed. The mass invasion of privacy, the constant, mind-boggling collection of data, is the biggest issue of our time. We should never underestimate what Snowden did."

The Globe and Mail, May 20 2014: Frontline’s damning investigation proves your secrets aren’t safe,” by John Doyle

The Globe and Mail, May 21 2014: "Canada needs a royal commission on spying and privacy of Canadians"

Aaron Swartz:

"One year after the tragic death of the campaigning hacker, a global campaign against surveillance is building the Don’t Spy On Us campaign in his spirit."

The Guardian, February 14, 2014: "Remembering Aaron Swartz: the open web icon,” by Alex Hern

"There’s a promising trailer out today for The Internet’s Own Boy, Brian Knappenberger’s Kickstarter-funded documentary about Aaron Swartz. The film, which opens June 27, looks like it has a chance to provide some thought-provoking policy context and framing for what happened to the late Internet freedom advocate, Reddit co-founder, and hacktivist.”

Slate, April 29, 2014: “The New Aaron Swartz Documentary Looks Powerful. Here’s the Trailer,” By Lily Hay Newman

"The UK’s intelligence services can process 21 petabytes of data per day -- that’s 39 billion pieces of information that could be the private data of any citizen. This mass surveillance violates your privacy and chills free speech across the globe. The current law offers little protection. We are calling for reform of the legal framework so the intelligence agencies stop spying on us."

Don’t Spy on Us website

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Report Run-Down: Turnover, Participation Rate & Job Vacancies in Canada, and Health Care Benefits

Turnover -- The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

"Whether your organization has low voluntary turnover, high voluntary turnover, low involuntary turnover, high involuntary turnover, or some combination of the above that varies by department and according to the time of the year, turnover statistics tell a story about your company processes, procedures, leadership, and culture."

"The purpose of this paper is to explore why turnover matters and what it really means to manage turnover."

"Hint: It’s way more than a numbers game."

"This paper will also present tips and solutions to maintaining or creating the happy ending to your ’turnover story.’"

PayScale, May 2014: “Turnover -- The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly”

Download the PDF (13 pages) without signing up here.

Aging Workers Aren’t Giving up on Finding Work, They’re Simply Retiring

"A new Royal Bank analysis suggests the Canada’s labour market is already starting to feel the impact of the aging workforce."

"The RBC paper notes that, given soft job growth in the past year and the corresponding decline in the labour participation rate, it is easy -- and likely inaccurate -- to jump to the conclusion that many Canadians are becoming too discouraged to look for work."

"But economist Nathan Jansen [sic] says the most likely explanation is just that the baby boomer generation is starting to retire.”

"The evidence for such a conclusion is there has been an increase in the number of Canadians classified as not in the workforce."

"It turns out that 65 year olds and older are responsible for most of the increase in the not-in-the workforce category not --because they are discouraged but because they have retired, says Jansen [sic].”

The Toronto Star, May 21, 2014: “Aging workers aren’t giving up on finding work, they’re simply retiring: RBC”

CTV News, May 21, 2014: “Aging workers starting to impact Canada’s labour market, RBC says,” by Julian Beltrame

RBC Economics, May 2014: “What explains the decline in Canada’s labour force participation rate?,” by Nathan Janzen (3 pages, PDF)

Job Vacancies in Brief, Three-Month Average Ending in February 2014

"There were 194,000 job vacancies among Canadian businesses in February, a decline of 21,000 compared with February 2013. There were 7.0 unemployed people for every job vacancy, up from 6.3 one year earlier. This increase in the ratio of unemployment to job vacancy was mostly the result of the decline in job vacancies."

"The national job vacancy rate was 1.3% in February, down from 1.5% a year earlier."

Available in CANSIM: tables CANSIM table284-0001 and CANSIM table284-0003.

Statistic Canada’s The Daily, May 20, 2014: “Job vacancies in brief, three-month average ending in February 2014”

2014 Employer Survey on Purchasing Value in Health Care

"The 19th Annual Towers Watson/National Business Group on Health Employer Survey on Purchasing Value in Health Care tracks employers’ strategies and practices, and the results of their efforts to provide and manage health benefits for their workforce. This comprehensive report, The New Health Care Imperative: Driving Performance, Connecting to Value, identifies the actions of high-performing companies, as well as current trends in the health care benefit programs of U.S. employers with at least 1,000 employees.”

"The survey found that employers are clearly committed to providing subsidized health care benefits to active employees, even in an environment of continued health care cost increases, uncertainty about some provisions of health care reform and an economy that is slow to recover."

"Despite a moderate health care cost trend of 4.1% (after plan changes) in 2013, costs continue to rise above the rate of inflation, thereby exacerbating concerns about companies’ long-term ability to provide these benefits."

"Still, high-performing companies were able to manage costs by implementing the most effective tactics for improving workforce health."

Towers Watson, May 2014: “Full Report: Towers Watson/NBGH 2013/2014 Employer Survey on Purchasing Value in Health Care”

Towers Watson & National Business Group, May 2014: “The New Health Care Imperative: Driving Performance, Connecting to Value” (32 pages, PDF)

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No Matter What the Boss Says About Flextime, Get to Work Early

“Flex-time is not as flexible as you might think.”

"The belief that getting an early start to the day is virtuous is widely held. In fact, finds a forthcoming study, it’s so pervasive that managers rate workers who get an early start higher than those who get in and stay late, no matter how many hours they work in total or how well they do their jobs. And it could explain why other research has found that workers who have flexible schedules have less successful careers.”

The study, from researchers at The University of Washington, highlighted at the Harvard Business Review, will be published later this year in the Journal of Applied Psychology. It finds support for the idea that managers have a ‘morning bias.’ In other words, they buy into a common stereotype that leads them to confuse starting time with conscientiousness. They perceive employees who start later as less conscientious, and consequently less hard-working and disciplined, and that carries through to performance ratings.”

“The study had one piece of good news for night owls, though. Managers who started later themselves were less likely to show ‘morning bias’ when evaluating employees. So if you’re a late riser, try to work for a late-rising boss.”

Quartz, May 16, 2014: “No matter what the boss says about flextime, get to work early,” by Max Nisen

Harvard Business Review, May 13, 2014: “With Flextime, Bosses Prefer Early Birds to Night Owls,” by Christopher M. Barnes, Kai Chi Yam and Ryan Fehr

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Family Responsibility Discrimination

"[Family Responsibility Discrimination (FRD)] is an area of growing concern for workers with caregiving responsibilities or those who request flexible work accommodations; because they fear they will be viewed as uncommitted workers and experience stigmatization at work."

"This fear is with good reason; workers in this situation are at an increased risk of being fired, passed over for promotions, or receiving fewer hours or assignments at work."

"For employers, the growth of employment discrimination cases filed with the EEOC and recent awards in favor of workers that have averaged approximately $100,000 suggest that the courts are starting to view this type of discrimination with increased scrutiny."

“Research Questions and Design:

  1. What family care responsibilities led workers to perceive FRD?
  2. To what extent is organizational context related to a worker’s perceived FRD?”

"The research team explored these questions through a secondary data analysis of the 2008 National Study on the Changing Workforce (NSCW). The team looked at what types of caregiving responsibilities were more likely to lead to perceptions of FRD and the types of organizations in which these workers were employed. Of particular interest to O’Connor and her colleagues was how organizational culture and level of support for their family lives affects whether or not caregivers perceive themselves to have experienced FRD.”

Work and Family Researchers Network (WFRN), May 2014: “Perceived Family Responsibility Discrimination: A Growing Concern,” by Lisa Stewart and Emily Zuckerman (4 pages, PDF)

Jumpstarting the Stalled Gender Revolution

"The Center for WorkLife Law at UC Hastings College of the Law seeks to jumpstart the stalled gender revolution by focusing, at any given time, on a few projects that hold the promise of producing concrete social or institutional change within a three-to-five year time frame. WorkLife Law has pioneered the research and documentation of family responsibilities discrimination, also known as caregiver discrimination, which includes pregnancy discrimination (including a failure to provide pregnancy accommodations) as well as employment discrimination against parents and elder caregivers. Our current initiatives include programs and best practices for advancing women leaders, case studies on major law firm rainmakers and new models of legal practice, research on how gender bias differs by race, and an innovative working group on pregnancy accommodation."

The Center for WorkLife Law at UC Hastings College of the Law

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The Job Market Discriminates Against Black College Grads

"While it’s tough out there for all recent college grads, a new study finds that African-Americans face a particularly difficult situation when it comes to finding a job after school."

"The 2013 unemployment rate for recent college grads who are black was almost twice that of recent college grads overall, according to report released Tuesday [May 20, 2014] by the Center for Economic and Policy Research..."

"Downturns are typically harder on young workers than on their older counterparts, and the black jobless rate has been consistently almost double the white jobless rate for the past 60 years. Combine these two factors, and you get a job market that’s particularly hostile to young black Americans leaving college.”

"A large part of this problem is job market discrimination. One study found that job applicants with ‘black sounding’ names (researchers gave Lakisha Washington and Jamal Jones as examples) were less likely to get called back for an interview than their counterparts with the same qualifications who had ‘white sounding’ names (like Emily Walsh or Greg Baker). And some researchers have suggested that drug testing would improve the prospects of black job-seekers because hiring managers are more likely to assume they’ve used drugs and are less likely to discriminate when presented with actual evidence to the contrary.”

The Huffington Post, May 20, 2014: “The Job Market Discriminates Against Black College Grads,” by Jillian Berman

Center for Economic and Policy Research, May 20, 2014: “A College Degree is No Guarantee,” by Janelle Jones and John Schmitt (17 pages, PDF)

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Velvet Prisons: Russell Jacoby on American Academia

Be careful what you say until you get tenure.

Synopsis: “’Velvet Prisons’ is an hour-long documentary exploring critiques by maverick scholar Russell Jacoby regarding the foibles of the American academy, political life, and popular culture from the 1950s to the present. This captivating interview examines the fate of public intellectuals, the neutering of radical inquiry in universities, the need for daring utopian thought, the scourge of bad academic writing, the inspiring legacy of C. Wright Mills, the blight of pop psychology, the free-wheeling impact of the 1960s, alternative media, and the 'planned obsolescence of thinking' in a proudly anti-intellectual society. All these issues connect to a larger question: what does the ‘life of the mind’ mean in contemporary America? It is a question that Jacoby, himself a stubbornly round peg in the square hole of modern academia, is uniquely qualified to address. This documentary enables viewers to visit one of the most interesting intellectual figures of our time, much like earlier films on Noam Chomsky, Slavoj Zizek, Edward Said, and Jacques Derrida.”

Culture Unplugged, 2012: “Velvet Prisons: Russell Jacoby on American Academia,” by Kurt Jacobsen [video, runs 55:14]

"One particularly memorable and effective sequence appears in the course of Jacoby’s very sharp comments on the academic mores that marginalize writers with an interest in addressing a general and educated audience -- an ethos that ‘rewards careerism and networking and backslapping’ and people ‘making quiet non-contributions to micro-fields’ rather than ‘taking it big,’ as his hero C. Wright Mills encouraged young sociologists to do. As he begins to discuss the forces pushing scholars to focus on talking about their work only with one another, the screen fills with photographs taken in the meeting rooms and auditoriums of hotel conference centres."

Inside Higher Ed, February 13, 2013: “Velvet Prisons,” by Scott McLemee

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On the Job: Debating Sex Work

"...[S]ex workers are not simply figures in another’s drama. They make up their own narratives. As [author of Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work Melissa Gira] Grant notes, sex workers who have spoken out in defense of their work often have resisted the role of the victim by instead going to the opposite extreme and presenting themselves as empowered. A recent example is Belle Knox, the Duke University freshman who was outed on campus as a porn star and subsequently claimed, ‘Shooting pornography brings me unimaginable joy... I can say definitively that I have never felt more empowered or happy doing anything else. In a world where women are so often robbed of their choice, I am completely in control of my sexuality.’"

"To Grant, the empowered sex worker is just as fantastic as the victimized whore. She argues that we need to dispel fantasies of prostitution altogether, to resist seeing sex workers as either wholly exploited or wholly empowered by the work they do. Sex workers, as workers in any field, like certain things about their jobs and dislike other things. Sex workers should have, with everyone else, the ability to voice a complicated and ambivalent relationship to their labors. ‘There must,’ Grant writes, ‘be room for them to identify, publicly and collectively, what they wish to change about how they are treated as workers without being told that the only solution is for them to exit the industry.’ They must be able to talk about their working conditions honestly and openly, without having to fit their experiences into someone else’s fantasy of prostitution, and without fearing police surveillance and incarceration in response."

Boston Review, May 14, 2014: “On the Job: Debating Sex Work,” by Michaele L. Ferguson

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Global Economic Outlook Q2 2014

"The second quarter edition of the Global Economic Outlook offers timely insights from Deloitte Research economists about the Eurozone, China, the United States, Japan, India, Russia, Brazil, and the United Kingdom. In addition, this issue’s special topic considers the revival in international trade and the resurgence of bilateralism.”

Deloitte University Press, April 21, 2014: “Global Economic Outlook Q2 2014”

Deloitte University Press, April 2014: Full Report -- “Global Economic Outlook 2nd Quarter 2014” (72 pages, PDF)

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Profits from Forced Labour Estimated at $150-billion a Year

"Trafficking, forced labour and modern slavery are big business, generating profits estimated at $150-billion (U.S.) a year, the UN labour agency said Tuesday."

"The report by the International Labour Organization finds global profits from involuntary workers -- an estimated 21 million of them -- have more than tripled over the past decade from its estimate of at least $44-billion in 2005."

"Two-thirds of the profits come from sexual exploitation, it says, and one third is the result of ‘forced economic exploitation’ that includes domestic and agricultural workers... [Also,] 55 per cent of the victims are women and girls, primarily in commercial sexual exploitation and domestic work, while men and boys were primarily in forced economic exploitation in agriculture, construction and mining."

The Globe and Mail, May 20, 2014: “Profits from forced labour estimated at $150-billion a year in UN report”

The Globe and Mail, May 20, 2014: “Modern-day slavery generates billions: UN report,” by Jacqueline Nelson

The Huffington Post, May 21, 2014: “Sex Slavery A $99-Billion Industry, ILO Report Estimates,” by Daniel Tencer

International Labour Organization, May 20, 2014: “ILO says forced labour generates annual profits of US$ 150 billion”

International Labour Organization, May 20, 2014: “Profits and Poverty: The Economics of Forced Labour” (66 pages, PDF)

Executive summary also available here (8 pages, PDF).

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Book of the Week

Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work, by Melissa Gira Grant. London: Verso, 2014. 136 p. ISBN 9781781683231 (pbk.)

From the publisher: "The sex industry is an endless source of prurient drama for the mainstream media. Recent years have seen a panic over "online red-light districts," which supposedly seduce vulnerable young women into a life of degradation, and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof's live tweeting of a Cambodian brothel raid. The current trend for writing about and describing actual experiences of sex work fuels a culture obsessed with the behaviour of sex workers. Rarely do these fearful dispatches come from sex workers themselves, and they never seem to deviate from the position that sex workers must be rescued from their condition, and the industry simply abolished -- a position common among feminists and conservatives alike. In Playing the Whore, journalist Melissa Gira Grant turns these pieties on their head, arguing for an overhaul in the way we think about sex work. Based on ten years of writing and reporting on the sex trade, and grounded in her experience as an organizer, advocate, and former sex worker, Playing the Whore dismantles pervasive myths about sex work, criticizes both conditions within the sex industry and its criminalization, and argues that separating sex work from the "legitimate" economy only harms those who perform sexual labor. In Playing the Whore, sex workers' demands, too long relegated to the margins, take center stage: sex work is work, and sex workers' rights are human rights.”

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