In a bizarre example of what can happen when a government gets too deep into the private realm (ha), Germany is now threatening to cut benefits to women who refuse to work as prostitutes.
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.
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.
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. ...
Tatiana Ulyanova, who owns a brothel in central Berlin, has been searching 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?" said Miss Ulyanova.
Indeed! Will some Leftist please explain to me why this isn't a desirable result?
Update:
Aw, too bad... Xrlq says this story is a hoax -- though CBS and Dan Rather aren't sure yet.
Where is NOW and all the other lefty women's rights organizations?
Their silence is morbidly ironic.
A friend of mine who is an attorney in Hamburg says the story is mostly bunk. Apparently Merchthild Garweg, the lawyer alleging all this stuff, is an attention-grabbing ultra-feminist. Germany's answer to Gloria Allred, if you will.
Michael, it's a heartless conservative twist to an otherwise fine liberal idea. Or so a liberal from Connecticut told me.
Forget what I said about grains of salt. This story is a hoax. Clare Chapman and the Daily Telegraph are guilty of journalistic malpractice in the first degree.
Whether it's a hoax or not, it raises important questions about applying job-seekers' benefits. A less sensational example: if I refuse to accept a job in the defence industry, should I be denied benefits?
jez: The point is that the government wouldn't have any say over this kind of stuff if it wasn't involved in the benefits game at all.
I don't know why that matters. As long as somebody is in the business of doling out unemployment benefits, the same issue can still arise whether it's the government or not.
xriq: exactly, a private insurance company would have the same difficulty...
Surely it benefits the economy to reduce the time its citizens spend unemployed.
In the U.S. she'd stopped getting unemployment benefits after six months. In Das Deutschland, still collecting after a full year. Big diff.
And glad that Xrlq notified you of story bunkhood. If only his s/n is easier to type!
X: It matters because if a private insurance company does it, I don't care. People can choose to sign up with an insurance company that agrees not to force them into prostitution. If the government has a monopoly on the market, there's no escape.