Not if you don’t want them to, employers do not have a right to know if you are in the union or not.
If you are unable to commit to regular payments please email us at [email protected]
All aspects of the sex worker community are welcome to join the union – cam models, full service sex workers, sugaring, BDSM workers, stripping, adult industry performers, content creators or any other sexual/erotic act; anyone who sells their own sexual labour (as long as they are not also a boss) can join the union. This can be full time, part time or casually and anyone of any gender and age.
Your basic membership rate will be £5.89 per month (£1.48 per week). You can also choose to contribute 18p to the union’s political fund, which helps BFAWU campaign for better rights at work and fair pay for all.
Please note: It is important to tick the box when signing up that you are on a Zero Hours Contract so you are charged the correct amount.
There is no contract or minimum commitment for membership and you can cancel at any time.
As well as being represented in your workplace by trained representatives, there are a number of other benefits from being a member of SWU and BFAWU. From legal services, learning opportunities, financial advice, credit union, discounts on purchases and short stays there really is something for everyone.
Your bank statement will show a payment to ‘Bakers Food And Allied Workers’ or ‘BFAWU‘. There is no reference to SWU or Branch 600.
You do not need to live in the U.K. full time, however, SWU only covers the U.K. in terms of representation so cannot help with matters outside of the U.K. You do not need to have Leave to Remain status.
Members do not need to use their legal name to sign up and can instead use a chosen name if this is preferred, however, this will be the name that communication and letters sent to your address will be sent to automatically, so please contact us if you would prefer a different one.
To pay your dues in cash, you would need to bring your monthly dues to your closest Regional Office (you will find all the regional offices here: https://www.bfawu.org/contact/). If there isn’t any regional office near you, you can use the postal route in which case you would have to send your monthly dues by the post to the Head Office ‘BFAWU‘.
Yearly payments would only be possible when paying from the start of January of any given year because typically, our union contributions normally increase on 1st January and increases are not set until the August or November of the previous year.
Just as workers benefit from being part of a union, unions benefit from working with one another. Our parent union is Trade Union Congrass (TUC) affiliated.
The union isn’t a service – you, the members are the union! Instead of thinking in terms of what can be done ‘for you’, consider what can ‘we do’ as workers fighting for our rights collectively? The more there are of us, the stronger we are. A union isn’t a company, or an insurance policy, a union is all of us fighting together to better our conditions.
Yes, absolutely. We have plenty of online workers within the union, and the more workers fighting back, the stronger we are. We may not know our bosses name – but we know our boss is the companies that are profiting from us!
Yes, you can still join the union.
SWU runs a number of WhatsApp group chats, and working group chats for members who are interested in being more involved in organising around specific issues. SWU also has a Signal group chat that members can join. We are in the process of creating a Discord channel.