- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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 ñ including in the sex industry ñ 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- "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."
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- 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.
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- Tatiana Ulyanova, who owns a brothel in central Berlin,
has been searching the online database of her local job centre for recruits.
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- "Why shouldn't I look for employees through the
job centre when I pay my taxes just like anybody else?" said Miss
Ulyanova.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- "They are already prepared to push women into jobs
related to sexual services, but which don't count as prostitution,"
she said.
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- "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."
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- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005.
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- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/
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