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Prostitution and unemployment benefits

Lately, I’ve been hearing a very odd argument against legalizing prostitution, namely, that women on unemployment insurance might lose their benefits if they refuse to sell sex.

This argument is thoroughly unconvincing. First, there little evidence to suggest that this actually happens in countries with legalized prostitution, let alone that the problem is widespread. Second, the theoretical possibility only arises if you allow businesses to hire prostitutes as employees, and if the UI system requires people to take any job available. So, at best, the argument applies to countries with German legalization models and German-style unemployment insurance systems, neither of which we have in the U.S.A. Finally, the cost/benefit analysis doesn’t work because the status quo forces more unwilling people to sell their bodies that the proposed alternative.

Rumor has it that since Germany legalized prostitution two years ago, women have been losing their UI benefits for refusing to take jobs in brothels. Trish Wilson points to a Snopes report on the subject which concludes that the story is more urban legend than reality.

According to Snopes, the English-speaking world started worrying about German women being forced into prostituiton in 2005 when Clare Chapman published this article in The Telegraph about an unnamed 25-year-old German woman who sought work through a job center and got a callback from a brothel.

Chapman does not claim that the authorities actually threatened the unnamed jobseeker with benefit cuts for refusing the job. She merely points out that, since German unemployment insurance laws require employable adults to take any available job. She notes that since there is no specific exception for the sex trade, it is technically possible for a German citizen to lose UI benefits for refusing a job at a brothel that recruited through the state-run job offices.

There is no evidence that any German worker has ever lost UI benefits for refusing to work as a prostitute.

Yesterday, Robin from 3QD left an excellent comment dispelling some common myths about unemloyment insurance benefits and active employment policies:

No one is denied UI because they don’t decided to post signs offering to mow lawns, paint houses, offer moving services. If the stipulation for UI was that you take a job, any job--and practicably what does that mean? that you’ve applied for every available job that you have a possible chance of getting? that an unemployed engineer must take a job at a fast food restaurant? (which would quite a waste of considerable social investment in skill--or go freelance, and that UI would be disbursed only if neither of these panned out, no one would get UI.

Even the active labor market policies of Sweden (which at their height from its adoption in 1951 to the mid-1980s), in which the state found you a job, and if you didn’t take it benefits were cut for 90%+ of wage to 0% did take into account factors such as skill matching, location, etc. And that’s were the state found a job for you.

One has to show a reasonable attempt to find a suitable job for UI, which is all that can be asked. Going into self-employment first is not a condition.

I don’t know exactly how the American unemployment/welfare system works, but it doesn’t seem that the technicalities of the German system are directly relevant. So-called welfare reform pushed a lot of people into bad jobs. However, these welfare recipients were pushed into the workforce because their benefits were time limited, not because their benefits were conditional on not having any viable job offer. If any policy wonks want to explain in more detail, please do, the aisles are yours.

Germany’s form of legalization allows businesses to hire prostitutes as employees, but there are other legalization options. Here in the U.S., we could strike down the laws that criminalize the exchange of sex for money without decriminalizing brothels or corporate pimping.

It is important to legalize and regulate the sex trade in ways that enhance the autonomy of sex workers. There are many good reasons not to let sex work become another service sector job.

It seems only fair that the world’s oldest profession should be granted the legal status of other self-regulating profession. Sex workers should have professional organizations that license and certify members according to the standards of their peers. Doctors and lawyers have a similarly sweet deal in which the state agrees to impose a monopoly on the supply of healers and advocates in exchange for quality assurance. If the law said that you had to be a registered member of your State Prostitute’s Guild in order to legally sell sex, then only people who actively sought to qualify themselves would be eligible to work as prostitutes. (That would solve the UI problem, even if we moved to aggressive active employment policies.)

Even in countries where legalization could threaten UI benefits, this seems like a relatively trivial legal technicality that’s unlikely to affect anybody’s life. Compare that to the status quo in which criminals have the monopoly on the sex industry. Human traffickers and other pimps force people into the sex industry routinely. They reap huge profits because they don’t have to compete with legitimate businesses. They also get away with outrageous abuses because the victims won’t seek legal protection. As long as prostitution is illegal, pimps can extort from sex workers with impunity. Since prostitutes can’t organize and demand better compensation, they are also more likely to be trapped by poverty. No doubt, many stay in the life because they are too poor to retrain or retire.

If we want to save unwilling participants from the sex trade, our first priority should be to legalize prostitution and eliminate the criminal middle-men who thrive in the black market. The UI concern is truly a red herring.

[x-posted at Majikthise]

Posted by on 07/16 at 01:11 PM

  1. The theoretical case also came up in the Netherlands when legalization took place; however, the provision has always been “suitable” job, so prostitution was easily excluded.

    Posted by  on  07/16  at  04:05 PM

  2. I’m fairly certain gathering and hunting are older professions than prostitution.  Why pretend that our beliefs and habits concerning sexuality are ancient?  Additionally, I’m not sure how legitimizing opression ends same oppression.  Are there better ways to solve the problems you identify?  A similar attitude (legalize and regulate) led to the Contagious Diseases Act in Victorian England (a draconian policy toward the working women). 

    captcha - already (as in enough with this faulty logic already)

    Posted by  on  07/16  at  11:00 PM

  3. That legalisation of the sex industry would be legitimising oppression is begging the question- it assumes that such relations must inherently be more exploitative then any other activity undertaken to survive, rather then for its own sake ("If it was fun, they wouldn’t call it work").

    With decriminalisation, standards of behaviour become infinitely more enforceable (possibly contractual), workers have legal avenues of protection (the police) & recompense (civil litigation, etc.). Organisation along the (self) regulated professional would only reinforce this state of affairs.

    Posted by  on  07/17  at  01:51 AM

  4. That’s really disgusting! Patriarchy still prevails. There’s a greater need to make all men realise that women are not the commodities of trade to be passed between men. Legalising prostitution is weird idea, it just gonna increase the level of unwanted sex, rapes and hence the level of corruption. A dark future ahead at last.

    Posted by Alexander  on  07/17  at  07:35 AM

  5. BFSR,

    I’m pretty sure calling prostitution oppression isn’t begging the question, especially when the originally post is concerned with ridding prostitution of its oppressive consequences ("if we would just legalize slavery, we could give slaves benefits.  Not that there is anything wrong with slavery...").  I don’t think that I am going over the top here (as opposed to comparing working at the local CinePlex with a “profession” that is routinely associated with kidnapping, molestation, rape, beatings, and death).  I would hope that most people recognize that sex isn’t just about “fun” (like, say, playing ping pong), but is a set of symbolic practices so intimately tied up with who we are and where we come from, that making the analogy with a slot machine or some other mechanical socio-economic exchange does violence to something fundamental.  I don’t think mirm is wrong to assume that prostitution is oppressive.  As old as prostitution may be (and it is certainly neither the oldest, nor the second oldest profession), it has always been associated with oppression.  I don’t think we can capitalize ourselves out of that quality.  Legalizing and taxing something doesn’t automatically change the nature of whatever we are talking about.

    Posted by DocMara  on  07/17  at  09:19 AM

  6. I have a feeling that the employment model for prostitution is typically like the one used in the cosmetology business (and in strip clubs).  Hairdressers (and strippers)typically pay the owner a fee for the space, plus a percentage of the day’s gross, and pocket the remainder.  They are independent contractors, in other words, and therefore self-employed.

    If there were brothels that had employees, I suppose this screwy argument might have some plausibility-- although to be sure it wouldn’t be hard to fix it legislatively.

    Posted by Bill Altreuter  on  07/17  at  12:30 PM

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