In New Zealand, how­ev­er, the occu­pa­tion’s decrim­i­nal­iza­tion over the last decade has helped push back the country’s Vic­to­ri­an-era moral­i­ty laws to fore­ground human rights in the sex sec­tor. And last mon­th’s Tri­bunal rul­ing fur­ther affirms sex work’s legit­i­ma­cy as a pro­fes­sion and the work­ers’ agency as laborers.

When it comes to debates about sex work, fem­i­nists often raise the con­cept that it’s a ​“job like any oth­er,” as jour­nal­ist and for­mer sex work­er Melis­sa Gira Grant has explained . Yet the exchange of sex for pay remains a curi­ous­ly rad­i­cal notion for many around the world. While it’s cer­tain­ly true that sex work is a real career born of both neces­si­ty and ambi­tion for many, it also comes laden with social anx­i­ety and cul­ture-war taboo.

In Feb­ru­ary, the Tri­bunal pub­lished a deci­sion sid­ing with the work­er —there­by con­firm­ing that broth­el employ­ees have the legal right not to be harassed by their man­agers, just like they do in any oth­er profession.

Last month, the New Zealand Human Rights Review Tri­bunal made a land­mark rul­ing on the vio­la­tion of a woman’s human rights in a Welling­ton broth­el known as The Kens­ing­ton Inn, run by one Aaron Mont­gomery. But the case didn’t involve the typ­i­cal media tropes of a work­er being ​“sold into slav­ery” or abused by a sadis­tic client. Rather, the employ­ee filed a com­plaint against both Mont­gomery and Kensington’s own­er, M &T Enter­pris­es, after Mont­gomery alleged­ly harassed her.

In her com­plaint, the work­er claimed Mont­gomery reg­u­lar­ly made intru­sive inquiries dur­ing the peri­od of harass­ment in 2010, such as ask­ing ​“sev­er­al times whether she would have anal sex with clients and whether she ​‘swal­lowed’ when per­form­ing oral sex” and ​“whether she was ​‘shaved’” — i.e., had got­ten a Brazil­ian biki­ni wax.

The work­er had, as a mat­ter of com­pa­ny pro­to­col, sup­plied infor­ma­tion about wax­ing and which ser­vices she would pro­vide to be kept on file, mak­ing Montgomery’s alleged ques­tions com­plete­ly unnec­es­sary. More­over, the infor­ma­tion was intend­ed for nego­ti­a­tions with clients in order to facil­i­tate her busi­ness, not to sate her boss’ curiosity.

Accord­ing to the work­er, Mont­gomery also made offen­sive com­ments about her appear­ance — such as ​“you should give up your burg­ers” — that dam­aged her self-esteem and made her job expe­ri­ence mis­er­able. In oth­er words, Mont­gomery was report­ed­ly act­ing as if expect­ed bound­aries of civ­il dis­course and pri­va­cy in a labor-man­age­ment rela­tion­ship some­how did not apply in a brothel.

On top of the inap­pro­pri­ate behav­ior, the plain­tiff said, Mont­gomery sought to restrict com­mu­ni­ca­tions among staff: a clas­sic tac­tic employed by oppres­sive employ­ers to keep work­ers divid­ed and thus less able to take col­lec­tive action against unfair treatment.

As an expe­ri­enced work­er, the plain­tiff would guide new­er work­ers to the New Zealand Pros­ti­tutes’ Col­lec­tive (NZPC) as a resource for free repro­duc­tive health ser­vices and ​“a place where prob­lems could be dis­cussed, such as dif­fi­cult clients.” But Mont­gomery, accord­ing to the report, ​“was not hap­py about this and on sev­er­al occa­sions yelled at the plain­tiff and instruct­ed her not to tell oth­er work­ers about the NZPC.” The ten­sions esca­lat­ed as he alleged­ly start­ed to ​“crit­i­cize her for hang­ing out with the oth­er women out­side work,” con­strain­ing her free asso­ci­a­tion rights.

Ulti­mate­ly, the Tri­bunal found that Mont­gomery had ​“used lan­guage of a sex­u­al nature to sub­ject the plain­tiff to behav­ior which to the plain­tiff was both unwel­come and offen­sive and was either repeat­ed or of such a sig­nif­i­cant nature that it had a detri­men­tal effect on the plain­tiff.” The woman was award­ed NZ$25,000 for emo­tion­al dam­ages. Mont­gomery, who has denied the charges, no longer runs the brothel.

The pow­er of the rul­ing is in its objec­tive banal­i­ty; after all, boss­es who vio­late work­ers’ rights, intrude on their pri­va­cy or oth­er­wise behave inap­pro­pri­ate­ly, are out of bounds, peri­od, whether they’re in a cor­po­rate board room or a mas­sage par­lor. Giv­en sex work’s his­to­ry of stigma­ti­za­tion, how­ev­er, the fact that the law worked is arguably remarkable.

Even the clin­i­cal legal lan­guage of the Tri­bunal’s report is a refresh­ing con­trast to the sen­sa­tion­al­ized depic­tions of sex work­ers in the media; the plain­tiff comes across as nei­ther the tor­ment­ed vic­tim nor the unre­deemed whore. Instead, the com­plaint — and the rul­ing — cen­ters on her demand for equal­i­ty and respect in the work­place, and her resis­tance to a report­ed­ly abu­sive boss.

Cather­ine Healy, co-founder of the NZPC, which helped the work­er bring the com­plaint to the Tri­bunal, tells In These Times the deci­sion marks a legal break­through in the coun­try. New Zealand offi­cial­ly decrim­i­nal­ized sex work in 2003, man­dat­ing licens­ing for sex-work busi­ness­es and impos­ing health and safe­ty stan­dards for the sec­tor. Dur­ing the days of crim­i­nal­iza­tion, Healy recalls, man­agers like Mont­gomery would have been penal­ized for oper­at­ing a broth­el rather than vio­lat­ing his employee’s rights:

Of course, you don’t want your man­ag­er to be sent to prison for five years [for run­ning the busi­ness], because you want­ed to be a sex work­er… and you just want­ed the sex harass­ment to be addressed…. [Now] with sex work being decrim­i­nal­ized, you can focus on the very exploita­tive behav­ior that you want to be addressed, and we don’t have to be con­cerned that the nature of the activ­i­ty’s illegal.

More than ten years on, the Tri­bunal rul­ing marks anoth­er mile­stone for sex work­ers by show­ing how they can use the legal sys­tem to advo­cate for them­selves on an equal basis with oth­er citizens.

​“The author­i­ties now can under­stand that it’s not the nature of sex work that is the both­er­some thing at all,” says Healy. Rather, ​“it’s the behav­iors that go around [it] in terms of labor law, in terms of hav­ing a fair con­tract, hav­ing rights to real­ize and access jus­tice. … For us, it feels very historic.”

Advo­cates have long argued that the mis­treat­ment of sex work­ers is a byprod­uct of endem­ic stig­ma and crim­i­nal­iza­tion, which expose work­ers to dis­crim­i­na­tion, vio­lence, struc­tur­al pover­ty, and the increased threat of sex­u­al assault and sex­u­al­ly trans­mit­ted dis­ease. Though many sex work­ers do strug­gle with eco­nom­ic or social hard­ship, activists say the trade’s under­ly­ing moral prob­lem lies not with the pro­fes­sion, but with the soci­ety that sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly con­demns it.

Decrim­i­nal­iza­tion has alle­vi­at­ed some of these prob­lems in New Zealand. Research indi­cates since the Pros­ti­tu­tion Reform Act passed, more sex work­ers say they’re able to work for them­selves rather than tie them­selves to, for instance, an under­ground mas­sage par­lor. Many also report feel­ing freer to nego­ti­ate with clients over pro­vid­ing ser­vices and safe sex prac­tices, as well as expe­ri­enc­ing improved rela­tions with the police.

This progress reflects the evo­lu­tion of sex work­er activism as a pub­lic health and human rights move­ment, which emerged decades ago as a strand of rad­i­cal fem­i­nism and in response to the rise of the HIV/AIDS cri­sis. But gaps in the law remain, Healy says — par­tic­u­lar­ly for street-based sex work­ers, who still face legal and social dis­crim­i­na­tion for ply­ing their trade in pub­lic. In recent years, some anti-sex work activists in New Zealand have also pushed for zon­ing and com­mer­cial restric­tions on pub­licly sell­ing sex.

Addi­tion­al­ly, the pen­du­lum may now be swing­ing fur­ther back­ward on a glob­al scale, with a recent surge in anti-sex work­er leg­is­la­tion gain­ing momen­tum in sup­pos­ed­ly lib­er­al coun­tries like the Unit­ed King­dom and France. Cam­paigns are also advanc­ing world­wide for the so-called ​“Swedish mod­el,” which aims to reduce ​“demand” by pun­ish­ing clients and sex-ser­vice busi­ness­es direct­ly (and work­ers indirectly).

​“I think we’re at a cross­roads again,” Healy says. ​“It’s just unbe­liev­able that peo­ple are gain­ing trac­tion to push for the crim­i­nal­iza­tion of the client and the third parties.”

In New Zealand, at least, the Tribunal’s deci­sion is staving off the moral cru­saders’ reac­tionary back­lash. At the Kens­ing­ton, sex work­ers now know they can pur­sue their work in peace and stand up for the right to do their jobs — just like any­one else.