'If you don't take a job as a prostitute, we can stop your benefits'
CLARE CHAPMAN
(Filed 2005 01 30)
The Sunday Telegraph
BERLIN
Location of Article
(The article, slightly edited for brevity, was also published in the Edmonton Journal, 2005 01 30, p. A2)
A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual services" at a brothel in Berlin faces cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year.
Prostitution was legalized 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 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 an employer was interested in her "profile" and she should contact them. Only on doing so did the woman, who has not been identified for legal reasons, realize 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 [that is the official figure, but many people have trouble with that and estimate that the real number of people out of work is closer to 9 million — F4L], 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."
It will be interesting to see how all of that will evolve as time passes, but it will not end, not by a long shot.
Money is at the root of it all. Greed for money is an extremely powerful, pervasive and persuasive motivator. The article states that "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." That is malarkey.
Legalizing prostitution will no sooner stop trafficking in women and cut links to organized crime than legalizing gambling will cut links between gambling and organized crime, just as legalizing marijuana will not cut the links between trafficking in drugs and organized crime. Nobody in their right mind will believe that when we legalize crime we will reduce the number of criminal acts or the number of criminals.
Legalizing formerly criminal activities such as prostitution, drug trading, gambling, and sex with minors, will propel those activities into epidemic and perhaps even catastrophic dimensions. We have seen that happening with the legalizing of such activities wherever they were legalized, all the more so because all constraints are gone and the market will expand on account of that. That is the motivating force, the market and the potential for expanding it.
That is quite obvious from another statement in the article:
"Why shouldn't I look for employees through the job centre when I pay my taxes just like anybody else?" said Miss Ulyanova.
There it is: Taxes.
The governments of the world, especially the liberal ones that don't labour under the constraints of "old-fashioned" and "archaic" moral standards that they devoted themselves to eradicate, are quite happy to cash in on what were formerly considered to be vices: drugs, tobacco, alcohol, gambling and prostitution, yes, even sex with minors. Much money can be made from all of them, and the cash-starved governments (the liberal ones are hungry for cash more so than all the others, the more so the more liberal they are) want their cut in the form of taxes. They can legally get their cut on crime only through legalizing crime.
The media are in on that. Check the classified section in your paper for Escort Services. Watch TV and see phone sex advertised. Check the Yellow Pages, count the pages for escort services. Every major City's Yellow Pages contains page after page of ads for escort services (ten full pages in the case of the Yellow Pages for the City of Edmonton). Did you think that all of those ads offer escort services for people looking to be escorted on a walk to the church? Does anyone in their right mind think that newspapers and other advertising media that promote escort services in cities where prostitution is illegal donate the advertising space for those as a public service?
No, it's not just the media either, nor are federal and provincial or state governments the only ones that reap the tax revenues that they derive from being partners in the vice trade. Even in cities where prostitution is illegal, City Hall still collects large bundles of money from issuing business licences for business establishments that are engaged in the business of prostitution — escort services or otherwise. Now, isn't that much more productive than shutting them down?
When vices are legalized, the governments at all levels reap a windfall of a steady and increasing stream additional revenues. It has nothing to do with wanting to cut links with organized crime. It has much to do with strengthening those links by making governments full partners in the trade in vice that organized crime engages itself in.
What better way to reduce crimes than by making them legal and to have the wages of sin serve to reduce fiscal shortfalls?
It is up to us. Marriage is beginning to look more and more like the best crime-fighter of all. It certainly keeps women a lot safer than when we put them loose to be preyed upon by Father State, but even that is a fallacy. It is more correct to say that Big Sister preys on women.
Update:
Germany Rethinks Legalized Prostitution
FRANKFURT, May 13, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Germans are rethinking their position on legalized prostitution, made legal there in 2003, after reports that legalization has not really had any benefit for prostitutes, nor has it improved the situation for Germany at large.
In January, a woman was threatened with having her unemployment benefits revoked after she refused to take a ‘job’ as a prostitute in a Berlin brothel. The unemployed woman, a qualified information technologist, had indicated her willingness to take jobs outside her field and had worked in a café. After refusing an offer to work as a prostitute in a brothel, she was told by the job centre that her benefits would be cut off if she did not go into prostitution.
“There is now nothing in the law to stop women from being sent into the sex industry,” said Hamburg lawyer Merchthild Garweg, who deals in such cases, according to a Christian Science Monitor report. “The new regulations say that working in the sex industry is not immoral anymore, and so jobs cannot be turned down without a risk to benefits.”
Nor has improved ‘working’ conditions for prostitutes, one intended goal of legalization, ever really materialized. “When it was set up there was much talk of securing proper contracts, proper health insurance, but a lot of this hasn't materialized because of big holes in the legislation,” said Berlin’s Hydra prostitute advice center spokesman Marion Detlefs.
“Opponents say other Europeans need only look to Sweden to see the future of legalization,” the Christian Science Monitor article author wrote. “The country - which legalized prostitution 30 years ago - recriminalized it in 1998, after complaints that legalization had solved few of the problems it set out to address.”
See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Germany Forcing Unemployed Women into Legalized Prostitution
See Christian Science Monitor coverage:
Rethinking a legal sex trade
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