tinyurl.com/3mtd2 -> www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/01/30/wgerm30.xml
Contact us '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 wa s interested in her "profile'' and that she should ring them. Only on do ing so did the woman, who has not been identified for legal reasons, rea lise that she was calling a brothel. Under Germany's welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of w ork for more than a year can be forced to take an available job includ ing in the sex industry or lose her unemployment benefit. Last month G erman unemployment rose for the 11th consecutive month to 45 million, t aking the number out of work to its highest since reunification in 1990. The government had considered making brothels an exception on moral groun ds, but decided that it would be too difficult to distinguish them from bars. As a result, job centres must treat employers looking for a prosti tute 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 pot ential employer. "There is now nothing in the law to stop women from being sent into the s ex industry," said Merchthild Garweg, a lawyer from Hamburg who speciali ses in such cases. "The new regulations say that working in the sex indu stry 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 offer ed 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 "n ude 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 searchin g 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?" Ulrich Kueperkoch wanted to open a brothel in Goerlitz, in former East Ge rmany, but his local job centre withdrew his advertisement for 12 prosti tutes, saying it would be impossible to find them. Mr Kueperkoch said that he was confident of demand for a brothel in the a rea and planned to take a claim for compensation to the highest court. P rostitution was legalised in Germany in 2002 because the government beli eved that this would help to combat trafficking in women and cut links t o organised crime. Miss Garweg believes that pressure on job centres to meet employment targ ets will soon result in them using their powers to cut the benefits of w omen who refuse jobs providing sexual services. "They are already prepared to push women into jobs related to sexual serv ices, 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."
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