View Full Version : Take This Job and...
In the evermore enlightened EU, actually in Germany to be specific, a job is a job is a job (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/01/30/wgerm30.xml).
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.
Well, it's heartening to see that Germany at least has its priorities straight. :rolleyes:
Hey, they legalized prostitution, which is something that many here have stated should happen here in the US because it would provide funding for safeguards against STD's and crap like that. Well, it's a legal job in Germany. A job is a job is a job, over there. They couldn't stop the world's oldest profession, so instead they legalized and taxed it. Isn't that what many here have said should happen, because you can't really stop men from paying for sex from whores?
O/T - it's nice to see that even though Germany's economy is going down the toilet, Johns have enough money to spend on whores and that Brothels are in such a need for whores they're going through unemployment databases to contact women to be whores. That's great.
ravital
02-01-2005, 08:43 AM
Hey, they legalized prostitution, which is something that many here have stated should happen here in the US because it would provide funding for safeguards against STD's and crap like that. Well, it's a legal job in Germany. A job is a job is a job, over there.
All true, but I'm sure you agree that when it comes to prostitution, no one should be forced into it under the threat of losing legitimate benefits. I don't know any other name for it but slavery.
Sir Joseph
02-01-2005, 10:19 AM
This is what happens when a country has no morals. In the US at least we have some timne before that happens.
ethics
02-01-2005, 10:51 AM
Hey, they legalized prostitution, which is something that many here have stated should happen here in the US because it would provide funding for safeguards against STD's and crap like that. Well, it's a legal job in Germany. A job is a job is a job, over there. They couldn't stop the world's oldest profession, so instead they legalized and taxed it. Isn't that what many here have said should happen, because you can't really stop men from paying for sex from whores?
O/T - it's nice to see that even though Germany's economy is going down the toilet, Johns have enough money to spend on whores and that Brothels are in such a need for whores they're going through unemployment databases to contact women to be whores. That's great.
I am not sure whether you are pissed about their new laws or pissed at the Johns or what. Prostitution will always be around, and so will the johns. Hell, what is the corporate world? I'd rather screw for money than the crap I do everyday, bending over back ways, getting demeaned by multi-millionaire prima donna's. Give me sex 50 times a day.
SixofNine
02-01-2005, 02:59 PM
I'd rather screw for money than the crap I do everyday, bending over back ways, getting demeaned by multi-millionaire prima donna's. Give me sex 50 times a day.Well, I guess if you were going to take this to its logical extreme we would expect Germany to impose the same requirements on males, with the proviso of course that most of the work would be same sex.
Brian
cmhbob
02-01-2005, 04:07 PM
It's nice to see that "The government had considered making brothels an exception on moral grounds, but decided that it would be too difficult to distinguish them from bars." A brothel is indistinguishable from a bar. Nice.
Yoiks. Talk about unintended consequences.
:rolleyes:
Stiofán
02-02-2005, 04:42 PM
I'm just wondering if her reluctance to take the job is because she wouldn't get to the top right away and would have to start working at the bottom?
Just thinking aloud here..... :cool:
Steve
02-02-2005, 04:55 PM
Prostitution was legalised in Germany just over two years ago....Wait a minute! What the heck was its status back in 1985 when I was stationed at Mannheim, Germany? There was a red light district that was quite open and known to all, including the occasional beat cop on patrol. We were explicitly told that the women had to undergo regular health checkups but that was no reason not to use condoms. In fact, the sex trade was considered an excellent way for a young woman to earn money for college!
Steve
02-02-2005, 05:03 PM
OK, I see what happened. (http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/ten-reasons.html) It was tolerated before, winked at, so-to-speak, in special zones but some things like pimping and advertising were illegal.
Now it's legal everywhere, not just in special zones, and actual brothels, pimping, and advertising are now legal, along with the granting of regular worker's rights to the prostitutes.
So they just formalized a long-standing practice and eased up on a few rules.
ethics
02-02-2005, 05:18 PM
Yes, sort of what we have here with marriage. :P
ethics
02-03-2005, 01:24 PM
Snopes is saying that the "<a href="http://www.snopes.com/media/notnews/brothel.asp">woman</a>" doesn't exist but pointing out, under the new law, the hypotheticals.
Most German-language sources on this topic point to an 18 December 2004 article from the Berlin newspaper Tageszeitung, which (as far as our rusty command of German allows us to discern) does not report that women in Germany must accept employment in brothels or face cuts in their unemployment benefits. The article merely presents that concept as a technical possibility under current law — it does not cite any actual cases of women losing their benefits over this issue, and it quotes representatives from employment agencies as saying that while it might be legally permissible to reduce unemployment benefits to women who have declined to accept employment as prostitutes, they (the agencies) would not actually do that.