If you missed our #LawyeringForWorkersRights event last night, you can catch up on some of the highlights in this thread:

#LawSky #LegalSky #EmploymentRights #WorkersRights

DIY litigation: not legally complex but need to be challenged locally, and which then ensure better conditions locally

So many members bring local cases, and that affects the wider workplace. How do we join that up?
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Strategic litigation and everyday litigation: need to formalise the process (because then people NEED to listen).
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Comment from zoom: knowledge exchange really key, helpful in ensuring smaller branches don't feel too isolated (no people power to push; concerns about dealing with the union bureaucracy; what facilities to get legal advice)

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highlighting the role of scale in relation to risk: not just the massive cases, but, as sex workers strategise, focus on local authorities and get things moving there

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Funding is an important aspect of it. But how does one bring about movement?

Tests for what cases to bring: about reasonable prospect of success (because facing strike-out order)

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Tanzil highlighting the cuts to legal aid, and how that shapes what is resourced and funded, and how that is mediated around the metrics of risk.

Broader risk society emerging, which brackets out things like power imbalances. We need to rethink risk.

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Unison rep highlighting to be hopeful: not accepting that it is what it is.

what can we do to get membership accountability for legal resources? What info do members/reps need about how to get strategic cases heard?
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Reflection from the floor on the scales of the unions: smaller unions that have fewer resources and relative more to lose?

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Other risks of legal strategies: distracting from other work? no time for other organising?

And concern about reinforcing the idea that unions are service providers
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example: prior to Mercer, Liverpool ucu called out their management's bluff in imposing punitive deductions and management didn't dare to impose. QMUL did actually impose later on.

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Reflections from David Whyte: it's about constantly gathering what employers do and adjusting -- the Mercer Case's initial outcome shaped the behaviour of employers.

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questions about the accountability of the legal fund: how do we decide on that?

Because there's a lot of money on the line....
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But union bureaucrats aren't always keen on that shared knowledge, because there's an enormous risk involved in law cases.

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We aren't saying "this is illegal", we are saying "the law has to do better". The law is one of the way through which politics is lived and felt, so worth understanding how the law works and how it affects us as workers.

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Bruce Robin: highlighting finding the great test cases. But you can have the perfect case on paper, but chance is still part of the developments as well the political realities.
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Question about what it is that makes the bureaucracy so tricky in dealing with pushing employment law through legal work #LawyeringForWorkersRights

Asked about what models do work: suggestion of Belgium (tiny cheer from @onslies.bsky.social), especially because there is a lot of work together with the sex worker movemend and it is framed through workers' rights

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DECRIM NOW National Campaign for Sex Workers’ Rights

sex workers are asking for rights not rescue.

Calling for
1) local branches to support decriminalisation
2) calling on MPs to support amendments that stop the nordic model of almost absolute criminalisation. Go to the website:
decrimnow.org.uk

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hesitancy to go to court, especially with the length of time it takes and the only granular change, especially when there's no guarantee of anonymity & a fear of deportation
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Makes it hard for sex workers to access justice, because of the difficult status and social taboo.

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Strippers at the forefront of the organising, partly because least criminalised. Strip clubs are rogue employers who have relied on the difficult status of their employees, which makes it hard for them to organise.

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DECRIM NOW National Campaign for Sex Workers’ Rights

Discussing the #DecrimNow project #LawyeringForWorkersRights

Sex workers have a long tradition of engaging with the law, including through judicial review: not because a fan of the law but because it can be used strategically.

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They were invited to talk at a Health & Safety conference, which is a bog standard bit of #TradeUnionism, and sex workers know a lot about that.

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OVer to Katie Cruz and Tessa Herrmann on the sex workers rights movement and trade unionism in Europe and winning worker recognition for dancers. #LawyeringForWorkersRights

invitation to launch 12 May at 6:30 garden court chambers

And that book is about to be launched! Do get to Garden Court Champers on 12 May!

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Intriguingly, legal work didn't come up in the attempts at organising among these legal service workers. And yet they're aware of movement law.

Intriguing thoughts about the temporalities of this: questions immanence and having to be in it to win it.

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Concerns about withdrawal of labour, as it directly affects the current clients. Hard to weigh up the immediate needs and the longer-term gains and structural improvement.
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The issue with that: they come with a lot of good will and political commitment, and bosses could exploit that.

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