This is twisted.
German Government coercing women into prostitution
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2
005/01/30/wgerm30.xml
‘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.”
