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Sunday, July 16, 2006

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 Lindsay Beyerstein on 07/16 at 01:11 PM
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