Some folks might say that we?re heading towards a utopia
where there is no homelessness and no war and maybe, one day, no religion. This
is a sad state of affairs when a woman who refuses to work in a brothel may
loose her unemployment coverage (HT: The Write Jerry)
Sadly, once the government endorses this type of law, this
is the lunacy that we?re left with. I’m posting the whole article under the "read more" just in case this disappears from the web.
‘If you don’t take a job as a prostitute, we can stop your benefits’
By Clare Chapman
(Filed: 30/01/2005)
A
25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual services”
at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit
under laws introduced this year.
Prostitution was legalised in Germany
just over two years ago and brothel owners ? who must pay tax and
employee health insurance ? were granted access to official databases
of jobseekers.
The waitress, an unemployed
information technology professional, had said that she was willing to
work in a bar at night and had worked in a cafe.
She
received a letter from the job centre telling her that an employer was
interested in her "profile” and that she should ring them. Only on
doing so did the woman, who has not been identified for legal reasons,
realise that she was calling a brothel.
Under
Germany’s welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work
for more than a year can be forced to take an available job ? including
in the sex industry ? or lose her unemployment benefit. Last month
German unemployment rose for the 11th consecutive month to 4.5 million,
taking the number out of work to its highest since reunification in
1990.
The government had considered making
brothels an exception on moral grounds, but decided that it would be
too difficult to distinguish them from bars. As a result, job centres
must treat employers looking for a prostitute in the same way as those
looking for a dental nurse.
When the waitress
looked into suing the job centre, she found out that it had not broken
the law. Job centres that refuse to penalise people who turn down a job
by cutting their benefits face legal action from the potential employer.
"There
is now nothing in the law to stop women from being sent into the sex
industry," said Merchthild Garweg, a lawyer from Hamburg who
specialises in such cases. "The new regulations say that working in the
sex industry is not immoral any more, and so jobs cannot be turned down
without a risk to benefits."
Miss Garweg said that
women who had worked in call centres had been offered jobs on telephone
sex lines. At one job centre in the city of Gotha, a 23-year-old woman
was told that she had to attend an interview as a "nude model", and
should report back on the meeting. Employers in the sex industry can
also advertise in job centres, a move that came into force this month.
A job centre that refuses to accept the advertisement can be sued.
Tatiana
Ulyanova, who owns a brothel in central Berlin, has been searching the
online database of her local job centre for recruits.
"Why shouldn’t I look for employees through the job centre when I pay my taxes just like anybody else?" said Miss Ulyanova.
Ulrich
Kueperkoch wanted to open a brothel in Goerlitz, in former East
Germany, but his local job centre withdrew his advertisement for 12
prostitutes, saying it would be impossible to find them.
Mr
Kueperkoch said that he was confident of demand for a brothel in the
area and planned to take a claim for compensation to the highest court.
Prostitution was legalised in Germany in 2002 because the government
believed that this would help to combat trafficking in women and cut
links to organised crime.
Miss Garweg believes
that pressure on job centres to meet employment targets will soon
result in them using their powers to cut the benefits of women who
refuse jobs providing sexual services.
"They are
already prepared to push women into jobs related to sexual services,
but which don’t count as prostitution,” she said.
"Now
that prostitution is no longer considered by the law to be immoral,
there is really nothing but the goodwill of the job centres to stop
them from pushing women into jobs they don’t want to do."
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