Philly’s ‘best sex store’ laid off workers after they declared their plans to unionize

Passional Boutique & Sexploratorium, a decades-old, multilevel South Street sex shop known for its queer and trans inclusivity, has laid off its roughly dozen staffers ahead of a proposed sale.

The layoffs come one month after the store’s part-time sales associates — eight in total — announced their intent to form a union, seeking job protection in the event of a sale.

The workers, who hoped to organize an independent union called the South Street Workers Union, believe they got laid off because they attempted to unionize. It’s illegal for employers to retaliate against workers who want to form a union, but workers don’t have many options when their rights are violated, especially if the business shuts down.

Last Thursday, workers were told not to come in and that the store was closed “due to unexpected circumstances.” Several hours later, Passional owner Kali Morgan sent workers an email saying they were being laid off.

In a later message to them titled “My resignation,” Morgan referenced the layoffs and said she had “potential buyers who have made it clear that they work with their own family members in the store.”

The proposed deal “will eliminate the bulk of my debt,” Morgan said, adding that she was under a “strict no disclosure agreement.”

If the sale did not go through, Morgan said she planned to continue to run the store until March.

“I hope that you will understand and respect that this is the best path forward for me,” she wrote.

Morgan did not respond to phone calls, text messages, and email requests for comment.

Morgan, 55, had made it clear, over the past few years, that she was trying to sell the business, according to interviews with five former Passional workers. She’d often speak of a potential buyer only to later share that the deal had fallen through.

Floor staffers, who made $16 an hour, hoped that forming a union could help them secure job protection or at least severance.

They also wanted to challenge a noncompete agreement Morgan required them to sign that forbid them from working at any “fetish fashion, corset or erotica boutique, erotic art gallery, for-profit workshop promoter, or home party service … or with an online business that serves similar products and services” in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware while they were at Passional and for two years after they left.

During the December meeting when workers asked Morgan to voluntarily recognize their union, Morgan said she needed time to understand the legal repercussions of doing so and would return to the topic the following month. They never did.

After laying workers off last week, Morgan told them she released them from the noncompete.

Workers describe Morgan as a trailblazer in her field — she started the business in 1996 — with high standards for how the store was run.

“She is a genuine titan of this industry,” said Woody Woodger, a floor staffer who worked at Passional, or “Pash,” as staffers called it, since last June. Some customers would buy items at the store only if Morgan was there to help them, Woodger said, and her presence drove sales at sex and kink conventions such as Mid-Atlantic Leather and Dark Odyssey.

She held elaborate trainings for new staff on topics such as how to fit a corset and select different types of lube, and would test workers afterward. She had manuals on each of the core values of the store. One was “atmosphere,” where workers were told that when they opened the store, they needed to check for smell: Smell the store, it said, and smell yourself, said Greer Turner, a former floor staffer.

And she listened to her workers, at least on some issues: Many of her former staffers are immunocompromised and insisted the store uphold a mask policy after most stores dropped theirs. Morgan obliged.

But workers said she was also a chaotic, disorganized boss who spoke openly about her financial anxieties and would cut hours, or staffers altogether, every winter. Workers named it her “winter anxiety.”

One worker who survived three rounds of layoffs said Morgan appeared to lay off the staffers who worked the most hours. (Thirty-two hours a week was the most anyone could work at Passional.) This employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation at her full-time job, said every winter, Morgan would hold individual meetings where workers felt like they had to plead for their jobs.

Workers said they were devastated at what they saw as the gutting of an inclusive space for disabled, queer, and trans people. It was that energy that drew many of them, who are disabled, queer, and trans themselves, to work at the store.

“It was the best sex store in Philly,“ Woodger said.