Sex Workers’ Union Push Complicates Fights for IP Rights, Status

A legal brothel outside Las Vegas has emerged as the latest battleground for the fight over entertainment workers’ intellectual property rights and whether organized labor is the answer to advocating for image protections.

Seventy-four sex workers, known formally as courtesans, are seeking union representation at Sheri’s Ranch in Pahrump, Nev. The workers say management asked them to sign away certain intellectual property—such as OnlyFans posts or TikTok videos—that could give the brothel ownership of intimate content produced on and off the job.

At issue is their future earnings, as job prospects are limited after they leave the profession, said Jupiter Jetson, a former Sheri’s Ranch worker who says she was fired for her part in the initial organizing drive.

“There is a stigma that carries with you,” said Jetson, who asked to be referred to by her stage name out of concern for her safety. “For a lot of us monetizing our name, image, likeness, our creativity is the best path forward for when it’s time to leave the ranch.”

To win union representation and maintain that control, however, the sex workers must thread a legal needle, asserting they’re employees under the National Labor Relations Act while also being the sole proprietors of their personal brand—two claims increasingly at odds with each other, attorneys said.

If successful, the drive would mark the first time US brothel workers have unionized, according to the CWA.

The dispute underscores growing tensions for unions representing entertainment-industry workers navigating what rights an employer has to use a performer’s image outside the traditional workplace, especially in the era of artificial intelligence.

After a months-long strike in 2023, the Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Arts and the Writers Guild of America won some guardrails limiting studios’ ability to use AI to replicate workers’ performances. But both contracts are up for renegotiation this year.

“When the work product that you’re creating uses your name, image, and likeness, that’s when things start to get complicated,” said Wendy LaManque, a partner in Pryor Cashman’s labor and employment group specializing in entertainment relations.

Image Use

The brothel’s workers petitioned the National Labor Relations Board to join the Communications Workers of America last month, after they were asked to sign independent contractor agreements that would give the company ownership over their production outside of day-to-day work, including content created on social media platforms like TikTok, they said.

A spokesperson for Sheri’s Ranch didn’t respond to requests for comment. The Washington-Baltimore News Guild, which is affiliated with the CWA, represents employees of Bloomberg Law.

The contract is representative of a “very typical independent contract agreement” with “standard” language a company would use if they were hiring a software developer to write code, said Morse, Barnes-Brown & Pendleton PC member Amanda Schreyer, who works on IP matters and reviewed the proposed agreement.

These provisions are designed to protect employers’ interests in works they commission, said Scott Witlin, a partner in the labor and employment department at Barnes and Thornburg.

Though the language is standard, its implications for sex workers are vastly different than for traditional contractors, attorneys said.

“Maybe this is left in because this is what is always in an independent contractor agreement” or there’s a specific concern the brothel has, because “we have now almost two pages about intellectual property rights in a contract about sex,” Schreyer said.

The provisions could give Sheri’s Ranch some rights over OnlyFans videos or other content produced at the brothel, depending on what qualifies as “brothel services,” attorneys said. The contract references photographs and social media under that umbrella.

If a sex worker builds a huge social media following, and their content includes them at the brothel, the brothel may want to be able to say, “We own that, we can use it,” Schreyer said. That could give the employer somerights to reproduce the materials, attorneys said.

“By corporate policy, we’re required to stay on campus 24 hours a day, even when we are not on shift,” Jetson said. “There is no line that demarcates what is work product and what is something we are making while we happen to be living in the home that we work out of.”

Classification

To win unionization, the workers will have to convince the NLRB they’re employees and not independent contractors, which would make them ineligible for unionization under the NLRA.

While sex workers have historically been deemed contractors, there have been instances in Nevada of sex workers suing to change their classification to employees, said Kimberly Krawiec, a law professor at the University of Virginia who studies the profession. Those cases have mostly settled out of court, she said.

“Most of it turns on the control that the brothel exercises, especially during the times when they are required to live on site,” Krawiec said.

If the workers are deemed employees, however, that could give the Ranch more control over the content they produce on site.

“Under copyright law, the results and proceeds of the work of an employee are automatically the property of the employer,” Witlin said.

If the workers successfully unionize, the precise contours of each side’s IP rights would be hashed out in collective bargaining.

After tense negotiations, SAG-AFTRA in 2023 won contract language that requires studios to obtain consent and pay performers before replicating their likeness in a separate medium. The sex workers could copy those provisions, but they face a more challenging environment than actors, labor observers said.

Sex workers have less star power than Hollywood actors, so the CWA will likely have less leverage than SAG-AFTRA to negotiate favorable IP conditions, attorneys said.

Without that celebrity leverage, the union could risk losing out if the sex workers win classification as employees.

IP provisions “would be determined by the bargaining process, if they have enough leverage,” Witlin said. “They’re sort of caught between a rock and a hard place.”