Ill Considered Policies in Action

[Occhidiangela]

From the UK's Telegraph.

I was giggling into my coffee on the insanity and illogic of what at the outset surely seemed a logical, German approach to a sector of their service industry. In another thread, I posted my support for legalized prostitution. This article is fair warning that synergy or interaction with other labor regulations could create some odious side effects to my position.

The moral of this story about "immoral" (or not) avocations?

Policy makers: Do Your Homework, and do both Unit and Integration testing!

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

(Occhinote:  German Lurkers.  Does this sound true to you, or has The Telegraph gotten it "not quite right?")

The government had considered making brothels an exception on moral grounds, but decided that it would be too difficult to distinguish them from bars.

Occhinote:  Can't tell a bar from a cathouse?  Here's the Rogue's Recommended method.  Observe transactions.  To determine which is a bar, and which a brothel  . . . In the bar, one may give money to the barman hoping to find a roll in the hay; in a brothel, the guess work is taken out, the fee likely higher.

As a result, job centres must treat employers looking for a prostitute in the same way as those looking for a dental nurse.

Occhinote:  That appears to be The Law.  (see below for more on "The Law.")

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."

Occhi:  Government legislating morality, immorality.  How interesting.

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."
© Copyright of Telegraph

My slant? Having been involved in policy writing, a tweak to job filling policy (no pun intended) may be in order. Or maybe not. I wonder. Maybe the lady objecting to this is alone in her objections, or one of a very small group. Note the attorney "specializing in these cases." Insert "self licking ice cream cone" joke here ___ no puns intended.

The state of play depicted is an example of the pitfalls of a purely, albeit limited, logical approach -- unit testing if you will -- to any system without working out extended, cross functional if-then trees -- integration testing. It is also an example of how, unintentionally, a bizarre extension of global Women's Liberation, laws of labor supply and demand, and the entry of women into The Labor Pool writ large leaves one woman in the "full circle" irony of . . . being forced to work on her back to pay the rent? Law of unintended outcomes: Case 1, 869.

That she is an unemployed IT worker strikes me as particularly relevant to the white collar crunch in The West. Hey guys: Could you accept career change to gigilo if the IT job dries up? Would you object?

Charles Dickens, through Mr Bumble in Oliver Twist, said it better than I ever could:

"The Law Is A Ass!"

“If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, “the law is a ass—a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience.”

Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, ch. 51, p. 399 (1838).

Occhi