Don’t Want To Be A Prostitute? No Unemployment For You.

Update: There would appear to be more to this story then meets the eye. No sources can be found on the internet, but Mark in the comments has some salient points to make.
Ahhh, the triumphs of old Europe’s socialism (via Brain Terminal).

Telegraph – 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 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.
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, taking the number out of work to its highest since reunification in 1990.

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  • http://Array Mark

    I can’t find a source, but I will tell you what I know.

    The article in the Telegraph went on to give the example of a German brothel owner, Ulrich Kueperkoch, who is taking a local job centre to court for refusing to allow his adverts for prostitutes. The Telegraph journalist was clearly trying, in raising this case, to imply that job centres in Germany consider prostitution to be a profession one has to take up if faced with the alternative of unemployment.

    However, the very fact that the job centre is being taken to court shows that it refuses to consider brothel work as an acceptable form of employment. It won’t carry the adverts, therefore making Herr Kueperkoch rather angry.

    Further, the German job centre network has actually issued a statement to the Deutsche Welle, to the effect that they had ‘decided not to be active in that market sector [prostitution] due to its belief that such work could infringe on an individual’s rights if he or she is forced to take the job’.

    Clearly that undermines the basis of the story entirely.

    As for what actually happened?

    Well, the 25 year old waitress, Sabine Bright, was given work by her job centre at a bar which (unknown to the job centre) also functioned as a brothel. She didn’t take the job. Her benefits were unaffected. No-one has threatened her with the removal of her benefits because of this embarrassing incident. The story is therefore without foundation.

  • Mark

    The Telegraph is actually quite a reputable newspaper.

    However, this story has subsequently been proven to be categorically false.

  • Mark

    (This information came from Private Eye magazine, scourge of inaccurate journalism – they don’t, unfortunately, have a website).

  • Jadegold

    Rob: Think about this for a moment.

    Does this story sound plausible to you?

    FYI: The Telegraph has journalistic standards slightly below, say, Matt Drudge.

    http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1302610,00.html

    Excerpt: “Under the new law, long-term unemployed who refuse jobs can have their welfare benefits reduced. If a person is under 25 years of age, the government can cut all support except the monthly housing reimbursement and non-cash benefits. A person is required to take any legal job. A special morality clause, however, ensures that unemployed will not be forced into prostitution — which is legal and regulated in Germany.”

  • http://sayanythingblog.com robport

    I hadn’t heard that Mark. Can you point me to a source and I’ll update?

  • http://sayanythingblog.com robport

    Thank you Mark. I’ve updated.

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