About us
PiA Counselling Centre
Mission
At the PiA Counselling Centre, we help sex workers deal with the various challenges they face. We provide support and advice, regardless of their personal circumstances. This enables sex workers to carry out their work as independently and legally as possible under the given conditions.
This is us.
The PiA Counselling Centre was founded in 2010 and emerged from a project of the Salzburg AIDS service organisation. The counselling centre is based at Frau & Arbeit gGmbH and fully funded by public funds. The top priority for the counsellors is to ensure that all those affected, regardless of personal decisions and life realities, have access to legal information, health services and safe working conditions. This website provides comprehensive information for people who offer sexual services in Salzburg or are considering doing so.
We deliberately use the term ‘sex work’ instead of ‘prostitution’. This is to emphasise that it is a recognised professional activity in Austria that is associated with corresponding rights and obligations. In this context, it is essential for us that sex workers can exercise their rights and offer their services in a safe and respectful environment.
We are committed to
- protecting the personal rights of sex workers
- the abolition of mandatory medical examinations
- further steps towards the decriminalisation of sex work
- destigmatisation of sex work in society
- an end to discriminatory, transphobic and racist practices by authorities and institutions
- the expansion of support services for sex workers that address their actual needs