| The suggestion that sex-trade workers should be unionized, made by the president of Newfoundland’s Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), isn’t receiving any support in Alberta.
Wayne Lucas, Newfoundland’s regional president of CUPE, told the media on Labour Day that he’d like to see sex-trade workers unionized to ensure they receive the same benefits and protection as other represented workers.
Both Alberta unions and agencies working with prostitutes are opposed to the idea, but they agree that more needs to be done to help people in the sex trade.
Alberta Union of Public Employees president Dan MacLennan says unionizing those employed in the sex trade would be impossible because prostitution is not a legal profession. However, he says the status quo for people in the sex trade is unacceptable. MacLennan says prostitutes work in Canada’s most dangerous profession, but they have no protection.
"They’re a group of people who, as a result of their jobs, are being assaulted and murdered," says MacLennan. "As a society we should be looking at what we can do to help them."
There’s no question that prostitutes in Calgary live a dangerous existence. On August 30, city workers discovered the body of 43-year-old Shirley Lynn Allwright, a homeless prostitute, in a tent by the Elbow River across from the Talisman Centre. Allwright had been murdered. As of press time, no one had been charged. Earlier this summer, a 17-year-old (who can’t be named because he’s a young offender), pled guilty to vicious attacks on seven prostitutes in the Forest Lawn area. He threatened them all with a knife, handgun or box cutter and then sexually assaulted them.
MacLennan says the province has to put more funding into programs to help sex-trade workers get off the street. He says he’s unsure whether the legalization of prostitution is the answer, but he says the federal and provincial government should consult with prostitutes and agencies that help them about what could be done to assist people working the streets.
"I think more can be done," he says. "I think it’s an important debate."
Madelyn McDonald, program manager at Exit Community Outreach, says there are some large holes in services that need to be filled in Calgary.
McDonald says Calgary needs a drug and alcohol treatment centre specifically geared towards prostitutes. She says the city also needs a hospice for sex-trade workers who are seriously ill due to hepatitis C or AIDS. McDonald says she knows of a 30-year-old prostitute currently dying of AIDS, who is still working as a prostitute to feed her drug habit. The woman has nowhere to go.
McDonald says raising the minimum wage could also prevent some people from ending up working on the street. She says she knows of sex-trade workers who are on the street "just to make ends meet."
Money is needed for programs "to bring people back from the brink," she says.
Leslie Evans, executive director of Street Teams/Safe House Society, says her organization has had to turn away kids involved in the sex trade from its residential treatment program. She says sometimes people have to wait three to six months to get in.
"That’s enough time to lose them completely. They could become entrenched in (street life)," says Evans.
Evans says Calgary also needs a residential treatment centre for boys involved in the sex trade because they currently have nowhere to go for intensive, long-term rehabilitation.
But Evans finds the idea of unionizing people working in the sex trade to be "absurd," because she says most prostitutes start out as sexually exploited children. "I don’t know how one thinks they could help by unionizing them," she says. |
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