Wow! About the worst thing I have ever read!

[argent_paladin]

This is literally one of the worst things I have ever read. Europe is fast approaching moral annihilation. Germany legalized prostitution two years ago, in an effort to reduce disease and organized crime. Therefore, prostitution is a legitimate business. Unemployed workers can be punished if they refuse employment at legitimate businesses...[url="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/01/30/wgerm30.xml"] :shame: you can see where this is going...[/url]

[b]'If you don't take a job as a prostitute, we can stop your benefits'[/b]
By Clare Chapman
(Filed: 30/01/2005)

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.

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.

When the waitress looked into suing the job centre, she found out that it had not broken the law. Job centres that refuse to penalise people who turn down a job by cutting their benefits face legal action from the potential employer.

"There is now nothing in the law to stop women from being sent into the sex industry," said Merchthild Garweg, a lawyer from Hamburg who specialises in such cases. "The new regulations say that working in the sex industry is not immoral any more, and so jobs cannot be turned down without a risk to benefits."

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.

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.

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."

[Rich*]

[Brother Adam]

yeah, that is pretty depressing. The expression "hell in a hand basket comes to mind". But little surprises me these days.

[rachael]

sick.

[spathariossa]

Unlike Brother Adam I was surprised. Yeah. Surprised.

[Brother Adam]

When you hear of people ripping open a womans stomach to steal a baby and leaving the mother for dead, little comes as a shock.

Lord have mercy.

[Norseman82]

Maybe now people will realize the wisdom of the Pope's push for the inclusion of God in the European constitution.

[EcceNovaFacioOmni]

Germany's social structure is crumbling.

[Iacobus]

argent_paladin, I think that the whole legelized pros. is a ruse there. The real reason she has to "take" that job is the welfare laws. If you are going to attack one, attack both. But moreover, don't be misleading.

[Socrates]

[quote name='Iacobus' date='Feb 1 2005, 05:16 PM'] argent_paladin, I think that the whole legelized pros. is a ruse there. The real reason she has to "take" that job is the welfare laws. If you are going to attack one, attack both. But moreover, don't be misleading. [/quote]
Both stink to high heaven!

[Thy Geekdom Come]

That's just plain sick.

[argent_paladin]

I disagree. There is nothing inherently wrong with having requirements for benefits, one of them being not turning down job offers. We have similar laws in America. If you are on welfare, you have to show that you are looking for work. The laws have been in the books for decades. The real recent change is the legalization and legitimization of prostitution.
I am not being misleading. Most wouldn't have a problem with requiring that woman to accept a job as a waitress or lose benefits. The problem is prostitution.
You are creating a false dichotomy, Iacobus. You don't have to be against welfare to be against prostitution and to assert that is patently absurd.

[Iacobus]

[quote name='Socrates' date='Feb 1 2005, 06:09 PM'] Both stink to high heaven! [/quote]
We agree on that.

At least that they both stink in some way.

[Socrates]

Ignore my last post (too late to edit it). I wasn't reading carefully when I posted that. Sorry-my bad. I have no problem with people not receiving welfare if offered jobs. I have a problem with the whole welfare system in general. I think too many are allowed to be on welfare, not too few. Again, sorry for my careless posting.

[Iacobus]

[quote name='argent_paladin' date='Feb 1 2005, 08:13 PM'] I disagree. There is nothing inherently wrong with having requirements for benefits, one of them being not turning down job offers. We have similar laws in America. If you are on welfare, you have to show that you are looking for work. The laws have been in the books for decades. The real recent change is the legalization and legitimization of prostitution.
I am not being misleading. Most wouldn't have a problem with requiring that woman to accept a job as a waitress or lose benefits. The problem is prostitution.
You are creating a false dichotomy, Iacobus. You don't have to be against welfare to be against prostitution and to assert that is patently absurd. [/quote]
There is something inherently wrong with not having a difference in your "must" work laws between something as immoral as a brothel and something like a café. If you are going to force people to take jobs to get off welfare (I would prefer that they have to prove they are activily looking without force) than show the difference.

The problem is in both, the prostituion and the law that doesn't show any difference.

[Socrates]

[quote name='Iacobus' date='Feb 1 2005, 08:21 PM'] There is something inherently wrong with not having a difference in your "must" work laws between something as immoral as a brothel and something like a café. If you are going to force people to take jobs to get off welfare (I would prefer that they have to prove they are activily looking without force) than show the difference.

The problem is in both, the prostituion and the law that doesn't show any difference. [/quote]
The problem is prostitution being treated legally as a legit business. I f prostitution was not legalized, there wouldn't be this whole problem. Argent Paladin's right about this one.

[Sinner]

Or maybe not......... see the Urban Legends Web Site about this article. It is a good site to check when you get forwards about various issues that seem just a little farfetched.

[url="http://www.snopes.com/media/notnews/brothel.asp"]Urban Legends [/url]

[argent_paladin]

I agree that no one has actually been forced to be a prostitute. But I don't see any easy way out of it. Basically, Germany has painted itself into a corner. If they hold that

A. Prostitution is a legitimate occupation, without any moral approbation
and
B. If you turn down a job offer from a legitimate employer for which you are qualified then your benefits can be withdrawn

Then we are logically compelled to accept

C. If you turn down a job offer from a brothel then your benefits can be withdrawn. If Germany tries to modify the prostitution law, they will face attack from those saying that it stigmatizes sex workers and discriminates unfairly against tax-paying businesses. If they modify the second law, their 11% unemployment rate would get even bigger, because people could say that they are morally opposed to any number of jobs and continue to collect money.

Even if no one has actually been victimized, the present state of affairs is still absurd.

[jezic]

wouldn't surprise me at all

the world is hanging by a thread. How much longer can it last like this? personally we could probably count the years.

[argent_paladin]

This article makes me feel a little better:

Unemployed could be offered brothel work


By David Crossland
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

BERLIN — Germany's trade union federation has warned that unemployed people can legally be asked to seek work in brothels under new welfare reforms introduced on Jan. 1 aimed at cutting mass joblessness.
The reforms, the toughest package of cuts introduced by any German government since World War II, state that people out of work for more than 12 months must take on any type of work or face cuts in their benefits.
Prostitution is legal in Germany and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's center-left government gave prostitutes employment protection rights in 2002. Prostitutes are now eligible for social welfare benefits.
"At present, no one is being asked to work as a prostitute against their will, and such a situation will probably never arise. But the government has neglected to clarify what type of work should be judged unacceptable, and that's what we're criticizing," said Claudia Falk, spokeswoman for the DGB trade union federation in the northern port of Hamburg.
"We need to get legal definitions of what constitutes unacceptable work," Ms. Falk said. "Theoretically, there could be misunderstandings. You could get cleverly worded advertisements for jobs as 'young waitresses' that have little to do with serving tables."
The government conceded that unemployment was likely to top 5 million for January, the highest level since the war. Faced with important regional elections this year and a general election in 2006, the government has put intense pressure on job centers to place the long-term unemployed in any kind of work.
The January rise in unemployment can be partly explained by a statistical effect of the reforms that have put thousands of welfare claimants in the regular jobless statistics for the first time.
But the number of jobless Germans has remained more than 4 million since 2001, and the jobless rate has been above 10 percent for more than a decade because of a combination of slow economic growth, some of the highest labor costs in the world and generous welfare benefits that in many cases have dulled people's desire to seek work.
Newspapers have reported cases in which job centers referred women to topless bars or brothels by mistake. In a widely reported case in 2003, a Berlin job center sent a 25-year-old woman for an interview in a massage parlor, not knowing it was a brothel.
However, the Federal Labor Office, which manages the dense network of state-funded job centers, said no one is sent for interviews in brothels, topless bars or striptease clubs unless they want to work there.
"Basically, prostitution isn't illegal and it's not out of the question that we refer people to such jobs, but because we have to adhere to certain societal norms, no one who hasn't expressed the desire to do such work will be referred there," said Ulrich Waschki, a spokesman for the Labor Office.
"And if a prostitute quits her job because she's sick of it, she won't face the penalties we usually impose on people who voluntarily give up work."