It’s a workers co-operative. It’s a women’s collective. It’s a sex bar:
It opened last year after around 50 sex workers – including migrants from neighbouring countries such as Burma, Laos and Cambodia contributed to a community fund. They each bought a share in the bar for between 1,000 baht and 50,000 baht, together raising a total of one million baht, or around $31,000.This was used to rent and renovate a three-story building which houses the bar downstairs. On upper floors are a meeting room and an information room for staff and visitors, with books and reports on prostitution and safe sex in Thai and English. There is also a classroom where migrant workers and those from the region’s hill tribes can study Thai.
The bar employs three permanent, full-time members of staff, including Lek. Other sex workers – whether shareholders or not - can also register as staff and join the government’s social security scheme.
And it’s called the Can Do, appropriately enough. This is the group behind it.
Hilton says the bar is popular with staff from NGOs, who come to study how it works and the conditions it offers its workers.
Ah huh. Yes, that’s why they come. If you can’t change the general conditions which lead people to choose prostitution, then it’s sensible to try and change the conditions within the trade itself. And if Chris D is right, this is exactly the kind of business in which co-operative working makes sense.
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