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'If you don't take a job as a prostitute, we can stop your benefits'

By Clare Chapman

Last Updated: 12:23am GMT 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."