More social protection for sex workers
Sex workers are persons who perform sexual acts for a fee with another person or for another person. Think of prostitutes, strippers, sex or peepshow performers and the like more.
Officially, sex work is not prohibited in Belgium, but its exploitation, pimping, remains punishable. It was therefore fundamentally prohibited in Belgium as an employer to have someone offer and provide sexual services under an employment contract. This ban is there to combat human trafficking and exploitation, but in practice it also prevents sex workers from taking out loans, for example.
To get around that prohibition and the additional problems, sex workers are often hired under employment contracts for other activities, such as catering or giving massages. In theory, these labor contracts should protect sex workers. However, when it comes to litigation, those labor contracts are often considered absolutely null and void, given that the subject matter of the contract violates public order and morality. As a result, the labor contract never officially existed and, consequently, the worker in question cannot invoke any social law, creating enormous uncertainty and damage in terms of social protection.
Non-invocability of the nullity of the employment contract with respect to the employees concerned
In order to combat this social insecurity, the legislator introduced, with a recent law of Feb. 21, 2022, the "non-invocability of the nullity of the labor contract with respect to the workers concerned," which also already exists for other categories of workers. This mechanism ensures that when the worker prostitutes himself, the nullity of the contract can no longer be invoked with respect to workers' rights arising from the application of labor and social security laws.
Consequently, employers can no longer plead nullity and on that basis, for example, refuse to pay the employee's back wages or refuse to pay severance pay. Nor can social security institutions invoke the nullity of the employment contract to refuse, for example, to pay unemployment benefits to the employee.
This also ensures that sex workers can accrue the same social rights, such as pension rights, as any other worker in our country.
More information about this important evolution? Our labor law team can be reached at info@bannister.be or 03/369 28 00
