‘If you don’t take a job as a prostitute, we can stop your benefits’
There is now nothing in the law to stop women from being sent into the sex industry. 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.
- Merchthild Garweg
Imagine this scenario, if you will. You’ve been out of work for awhile, you’ve been to several interviews, but no luck. One day, though, you get a phone call…the Employment Service has a job for you. You’ll be working nights, it’s steady work…and, oh, by the way, you’ll want to bring a pair of kneepads….
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 ñ who must pay tax and employee health insurance ñ 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.
The German government had looked into making an exception for the sex industry on moral ground, but it got to be a bit too tricky. What constitutes a bar? Or a brothel? It’s trickier than you might think…especially when you get government involved in setting the definitions.
So much for prostitution being a victimless crime, eh?
