source - http://sisyphe.org/article.php3?id_article=1573 -


2 février 2005

par Clare Chapman

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.



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.





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.


"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."

The Telegraph, 30/01/05

Mis en ligne sur Sisyphe, le 21 février 2005.

Clare Chapman

Source - http://sisyphe.org/article.php3?id_article=1573 -