'If you don't take a job as a prostitute, we can stop your benefits'

[emad]

Telegraph
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.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;sessionid=PDZ4PB1N1MM51QFIQMGSM5OAVCBQWJVC?xml=/news/2005/01/30/wgerm30.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/01/30/ixworld.html&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=11911

[emad]

1. Germany's welfare reform rules:

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."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;sessionid=PDZ4PB1N1MM51QFIQMGSM5OAVCBQWJVC?xml=/news/2005/01/30/wgerm30.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/01/30/ixworld.html&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=11911

[bloom]

4. that is horrible...eom

[Tsiyu]

7. Fuck You Germany

This is pure bullshit. If a woman WANTS to do this work, fine. No woman should be forced to choose between benefits and getting fucked.

Paid sex with multiple partners can lead to disease, physical trauma to the vagina, uterus and other female anatomy, and pregnancy. It also goes to the core of a person's morality. A Waitress job has none of these risks.

Will they treat males the same way? As no more than bungholes who need to just get in line to be packed or OOOPS! No bennies!


Sometimes I really hate men. Honestly. This is one of those times.

[Junkdrawer]

11. And just think: Even Germany wouldn't join us in Iraq...

There a some things even rats won't do...

[kiki]

17. Perhaps y'all should chill out on the xenophobia.

How about if, every time a single US public service department does something immoral, I put up a post saying "Fuck your whole country, you fucking American rats"?

Obviously this is a disgusting development. But you really sound like you've been looking for an excuse to say "Fuck you Germany".

[Junkdrawer]

26. OK...although I was thinking of the German Gov't...I'll give you that...

:spank:

[Tsiyu]

28. kiki, ya don't know me

Fuck America, too. For waging War for Oil and allowing a sick, AWOL, Cocaine addicted pissant to run their nation.

Does that make you feel better?

My "Fuck You's" are Equal Opportunity Sentiments

[kiki]

43. buddyhollysghost: Fair enough.

junkdrawer: Take it, beeyotch. :D

[Junkdrawer]

25. Self delete - posted wrong spot

[Warpy]

14. What they're failing to note

is that sex work is a dirty dangerous job, and that yes, it's skilled work. A good whore has to be able to read her clients, to engage in perversion safely, to be the fantasy that a wife is generally not willing to be.

Some women are well suited to this work, which requires them to be psychologists as much as orifices, and they provide a social as well as physical outlet.

If the only job available in the area is neurosurgeon, would that 25 year old female be required to take it?

Skilled work is skilled work. If you don't have the skills, you can't be forced to take the job.

[Tsiyu]

29. That's a good point

erhaps if a person could prove they don't have the rhythm they would make an exception. What if a person is a Virgin? That would REALLY mean they had no experience.

[notadmblnd]

23. would it be like any other job? do It poorly and get fired?

You can lead a woman to a brothel but you can't make her fuck. If she doesn't do well won't she just be fired and qualify for benefits again?

[LisaL]

30. Dear God. You would send an un-willing woman to a brothel

so she can prove she is no good at being at prostitute?
After how many clients complain do you think she will be fired? I wonder, is rape now also legal in Germany?
:eyes:

[Tsiyu]

33. Oh yeah, the rape doesn't matter

But it IS defined as being forced against one's will to get screwed. It doesn't count if you're forced to do it so you can EAT!!!!!!

[Yupster]

38. I think the question is if

a business is legal, can the government treat it differently than other legal businesses? Like that lady who owned the brothel said in the story, she pays her taxes like everyone else and runs a legal business. Why shouldn't she be held to the same standards of everyone else?

Can the government say my business is legal but immoral? Immoral according to who?

Should the government be deciding what is moral and what isn't?

Or should a person just be able to say a certain job upsets her individual morals? Should there be a reasonable test to that, or could a person demand benefits and say any job violates her morals?

If there's a reasonable test, who gets to write the questions on what is reasonably moral or not.

Obviously this situation is ridiculous, but I think care has to be used in its resolving.

The obvious answer is for the German Parliament to pass an exception to the law, but then you've got the government legislating morality which may not be the best thing in the world.

I wonder how the Netherlands handles problems like this as they've had prostitution legal for years.

[LisaL]

34. I don't think there is quite as much demand for male hookers.

[CindyDale]

12. That is absurd

Bet you could think of ways to get yourself fired real quick though. heh

Then you could tell them, "Sorry, I just couldn't get the knack of it." Or "they decided I was too ugly."

Would they make you become a high wire performer if that was all that was available?

[NickofTime]

18. Disgusting, NO One Should be Forced to Work

Look, you're missing the real issue, that Government policies determine employment levels and jobs availability. The German Government should be creating jobs in day care centers and parks. They can finance it with a 2% tax on ABB, Mercedes, and BMW!

[Darranar]

19. Neo-liberalism at its finest...

The United States isn't the only nation that has made war on its social safety net.

[Glenda]

21. How are brothels difficult to distinguish from bars?

"The government had considered making brothels an exception on moral grounds, but decided that it would be too difficult to distinguish them from bars"

This is the part I don't get

[LibInternationalist]

2. I wonder what happens when

they do this to a man -- I'm guessing uproar

This is disgusting

[Merlot]

8. And if the woman's married?

Has children?

Yes, I'm sure somewhere in germany, there is male prostution. Lets see what happens then.

Agree: disgusting

[oneighty]

10. After discussing this with

my lady consultant re-sex trade the question raised itself, men have some of the same physical attributes for the sex trade as women. I do not hear any men opening their mouths to protest. Are they afraid?

Anybody. Hey you men out there you gonna stick up for the ladies or not?

This is not exactly meant to be sarcastic.

180

[tk2kewl]

3. I bet bush*Co is saying "why didn't we think of that"

:puke:

[emad]

5. Maybe BushCo's exported this faith-based initiative in the first

place?........

[Junkdrawer]

6. Substitute "Volunteer Army" for "Brothel" and you got something...

A more direct "Economic Draft".

[Merlot]

9. Speaking of "Volunteer Army"

Off topic, but did you see SNL last night? Great skit where the army reservists ask rummy questions. One asked when she'd be sent home. rummy said that's what happens when you sign up for the reserves. The woman says she thought she was applying for a car loan, and the next thing she knew she was drugged, in a van, and headed for the army.

It gets even better after that!

[JitterbugPerfume]

16. this is part of

a world wide trend to anti feminism

making women second class citizens

[tk2kewl]

13. Yikes!

:scared:

That is a sick sick thought

[oneold1-4u]

15. Of no concern

You can place a big note on the nose of this one, that it is already in the program. One applying for UE compensation will have to support any reason for not being in the military and/or be sent for a free medical exam and work-up quickly.
The reasons to "head for the hills" are becoming more apparent every day and those hills may have to be in Canada or elsewhere!

[classof56]

20. Maybe Falwell, Robertson, Dobson, etc. should set up shop there

The field is white unto harvest for their brand of morality and righteousness. In this case, they could actually do some good, IMHO. Alas, though, they're too busy pushing for the gay marriage amendment, teen abstinence and destroying the Sponge Bob. I'm sure women being forced into prostitution is not a big deal for them. Lots of old testament stories revolve around the oldest profession, after all.

Tired Old Cynic

[Yupster]

39. I think Falwell's answer would be

that it was stupid to legalize prostitution. I think he'd start from that premise.

[Nikia]

22. I wondered about that

Obviously, this happened in Germany, which is different from the U.S.
For unemployment in the U.S. though, can job seekers turn down potential jobs on moral grounds. Most job seekers do not apply to jobs that they might have a problem with. I was just wondering, for example, if someone applied to be a bartender at a club with topless dancers, if they'd be denied unemployment benefits if they were offered a dancing position instead.

[Senior citizen]

24. This is nothing new.

Reagan economic advisor George Gilder had written that it was necessary to deprive women of jobs and social programs in order to make them available for marriage. He did not add the obvious fact that since not every woman is a desirable wife, without access to jobs or social programs, prostitution and crime would be the only survival options left for those no man chose to support.

That has always been the real purpose behind welfare reform, support of marriage initiatives, etc. Patriarchy doesn't care if women are wife/slaves or prostitute/slaves, so long as they are dependent upon men for their survival.

IMO it WILL happen here. The marriage & family fundy crowd is the fiscal foundation of the vice industry--their beliefs are what MAKE vice into vice rather than say, recreation. And keeping something illegal keeps profits high. Well, of course it already IS happening here. When minimum wage is not a living wage, women working for minimum wage have to moonlight to survive, and men are quick to notice and take advantage of that situation.

It also remains a fact that many women have to pay with sexual favors for the right to have or keep a nonsexual job. Despite laws against such things, low wage workers usually lack the time, money, and energy to sue.

Our unemployment benefits don't last very long anyway. But when we reach one of our cyclical overpopulation peaks as is the case now, genocide becomes commonplace and human rights become scarcer. With war, genocide, natural disasters, downward pressure on wages, rising costs of living, and precarious economies, the fact that children and women are 85% of the casualties of modern warfare, highlights the fact that during a patriarchy-forced overpopulation peak, life becomes cheap and the lives of those who give life become the cheapest.

I was around soon after the last overpopulation peak, WWII, and had hoped not to live to see the next one. I'm seeing it now.

[Yupster]

40. I thought the shortage in America

was marriable men, not women?

[Yupster]

41. Dupe

sorry - don't know how that happened.

[pop goes the weasel]

27. the real problem

is forcing people to take any job offered them. And that mentality is as true in the US as in Germany. It completely ignores that not every person is right for every job, not every job is right for every person. We are not interchangable. Every job should be available to every person with a matching skill set, but the individual has to be the final judge of whether the job is right. Two people with law degrees might be, on paper, right for entry jobs in a public defender's office, but one of them gets overwhelmed emotionally by human drama. Obviously, that one is not right for the job and shouldn't be forced to take it, even though there is a shortage of public defenders. Lots of us have the paper qualifications to be teachers under emergency teaching provisions, but I think we can all agree that there are some people who have no business in a classroom. Under US welfare-to-work provisions, parents can be forced to take work that leaves their children unsupervised throughout the evening and night, even though, as a society, we know that child abandonment is immoral.

The problem in Germany is forced labor, the same as it is here. As long as there is tolerance for forced labor, there is tolerance for forced sex labor. It is slavery that has to be fought, not just a particular kind of slavery. It's sad that people don't even think to question forced labor until sexual intercourse is involved.

[theboss]

31. How hard is it to have a "morality clause" in this law?

You don't take any job you have a moral issue with.

[Nobody]

32. What if you're not qualified for the job?

When I lost my job a couple years ago, we were told that we didn't have to take an unsuitable job.

Are the brothels that hard up for prostitutes that they're going to be legally forcing women into the trade?

Will new hire sexual orientation be taken into account? I wouldn't think a lesbian would be qualified to service male clients and heterosexual women wouldn't be qualified to service females. And what about virgins? They have no experience.

I'm curious, what would the interview be like?

[LisaL]

35. Well, I think Germans have gone nuts if they think

women should be forced to work as prostitutes and in other sex trades. They change their laws so people have to accept jobs or lose benefits. No exception for sex trade-well, that's nuts. I don't care if the woman is qualified or not-if she doesn't want to be a hooker, she shouldn't be forced to be one, even if she is most qualified for the job.

[Nobody]

36. I agree with you

I'd say that the number one qualification would be wanting to do the job.

[fedsron2us]

37. Forced prostitution may be legal under German law

but it probably contravenes article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

It probably also contravenes article 8 since asking a married woman to commit adultery obviously could be said to infinge the right to respect for family life

Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life

I would be very surprised if a case on this matter is not brought before the European court in the near future.

http://www.hri.org/docs/ECHR50.html

edit for link

[MissB]

42. Emad, is there a direct link?

Your link doesn't take me to the story. I tried searching on that site, but couldn't come up with the story.

[mare]

44. I'm sorry, but I don't believe this for a second

It is true that with the new law this whole scenario is possible, it doesn't meant the job centres are going to do it.
I also searched the internet for this supposed "waitress" they are talking about and couldn't find a single german news item about her or her case. And believe me, right now, if this were true, it would be all over the news.