Work as a Prostitute or Lose Your Benefits!

Link:  Prostitute Sees Sex Trade Hope for Jobless  (Reuters)

Link: If you don't take a job as a prostitute, we can stop your benefits  (Telegraph)

London, Sunday, January 30, 2005

(words in red reflect changes made after winning a wingnut award)

Talk about unintended consequences.

The link above will bring readers to an article about a (potential) disturbing trend in Germany where women who turn down working in brothels (may) be denied unemployment benefits under Germany's new unemployment laws. In 2002 Germany legalized prostitution in order to better regulate and drive the mob from the industry. Brothel owners and others in the sex industry have seized upon recent reforms in Germany's unemployment law to effectively force women to work as sex callers, strippers, and prostitutes.

Even more surprising is that German lawmakers foresaw this potential problem but failed to act upon it because...

<>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.

Sex industry employers seem thrilled over the new changes and surprisingly government workers at call centers seem all too compliant:

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.

This highlights a number of conflicting values. On one hand the legalizing and normalizing of sex industry work is seen as a positive by many progressives. On the other hand Germany's economy continues to face pressures and its leaders have looked towards the American model for solutions. Those solutions more often than not reflect a "neo-liberal" view of the economy and markets." The combination of progressive social values in Germany and economic reform based on the "American" model is producing outcomes which may further strain Germany's government efforts to change their economy.