German Government Enables Brothel Owners to Coerce Unemployed Women into Prostitution

Story dated 30 January 2005

"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. . . 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. . . The government had considered making brothels an exception on moral grounds, but decided that it would be too difficult to distinguish them from bars." Too difficult to distinguish form bars? What kind of bars do they have in Germany? Or are German politicians just stupid like most of ours are? An unemployed information technology professional, who is unidentified to protect her privacy, "turned down a job providing "sexual services'' at a brothel in Berlin [and] 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. . . realise that she was calling a brothel." When she "looked into suing the job centre, she found out that it had not broken the law", and that, in fact, the Brothel could sue them if she turned down their job offer and they continued to pay her benefits.

Well, that's nice. Germany is now forcing women to work in the sex industry. Are we going to continue to treat them as a constitutional republic, or are we going to see them more as a repressive tyranny? Of course, they're nowhere near as bad as China or Islamic countries. I'll bet this won't even be a blip on the radar as far as Germany's fitness for leadership in the European Union is concerned.

posted by The Sovereign Editor | 4:43 PM

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