Sucks to be unemployed in Germany....dang!

[Drbio]

'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."

[twelli]

If the same happens to male job seekers, the law will change rather quickly, I guess...

[MavKikiNYC]

Sucks to be unemployed in Germany....dang!

Literally, apparently.

[Smiles]

Wow, I'm sitting here imagining what it would be like to find myelf in such a predicament, and it's disgusting and frightening. Can you imagine the added pressure on a woman with children? It's one thing to be homeless when you're single, but when you've got dependents.....

Is it more ethical to refuse the job, lose the benefits and make your children homeless and hungry; OR to take a job at a brothel in order to keep your children fed, sheltered, etc.?

[madape]

... or move out of Germany.

[sike]

I didn't know people were allowed to have sex in Germany.....interesting.

[EricaLubarsky]

with beer that good, who would need sex? Or basketball...

[Smiles]

What?! Something could replace the need for basketball???!!! [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-shocked.gif[/img] [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]

Yeah, you could move out of Germany because that would magically provide for your family. [img]i/expressions/anim_roller.gif[/img] I guess that sort of indicates that, in your opinion, it's more moral to let your kids go hungry than to join the sex trade since you wouldn't likely have an income in a "foreign" country, nor the funds to move in the first place.

Thank G-D for the USA though! I could probably find the money to move there, and then bank big time on welfare. [img]i/expressions/moon.gif[/img] Moral dilema solved! [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-cool.gif[/img] No one's hungry, and no one is naked! [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img]

edit part 1: spelling

[EricaLubarsky]

and if you really miss the prostitution you could move 5-6 hours North-west of me where its legal.

[Smiles]

You saved the day again!

[mercury_rev]

Wonder why unemployment rates are so high in Germany......surely it has nothing to do with their uber-socialist economic policies. [img]i/expressions/moon.gif[/img]

[madape]

.. facing a falling dollar, German economists are thinking of creative ways to attract American tourists.

[Waschdel]

This article is another example for bad journalism. It is a mixture of facts and fiction.
First of all - do you really think that we don´t have any activists for female rights over here in our uber-socalist djungle? If this "story" would be true there would have been a huge wave of anger in the medias.
To the facts:
There is a law that says prostitution is legal. But this law was made to protect the women and not the brothel-owners. Do you really think that there is no prostitution in the US because it is illegal?
There also is a law that says that any unemployed man or woman who refuses to take an available job can loose the unemployment benefit.
But the official german office for labour denies to mediate prostitution.
There really is a Mr. Küperkoch who plans to open a brothel. He went to the labour office in Goerlitz and was told that the office would not mediate unemployed women as prostitutes. But our Mr. Küperkoch did not give up. He wrote a letter to the the petition committee of the german parliament.
Marita Sehn is the president of that committee. The 48 year old woman is a member of the FDP (free dimocrats party). A party which is part of the opposition with the CDU (christian dimocrat´s union). Miss Sehn wrote a letter to Mr. Küperkoch that she will take care for his petition.
The only success that she had is that Mr. Küperkoch is allowed to offer jobs via advertisements in local newspapers.
Everything else is nothing but fiction.

edited for orthographic reasons

[#41]

Haha, American some journalists better go work on a farm...