If you don’t want the porn work, you don’t answer the advert: another aspect of the Rescue Industry

You go to a job centre to look for work, maybe just reading the offers, maybe talking with an employee. Are you unable to ignore or turn down jobs on offer? Do centre employees say ‘If you don’t take a job soon we won’t talk with you anymore, you’ll lose your right to seek a job here?’ That’s the question. Because if not, then anyone who feels offended by the thought of doing any job on offfer can pass on it. The presence of adverts for legal jobs – whether some find them disgusting or not – does not turn the government into a ‘recruiting agency for the sex industry’. The reporter here says women are being ‘encouraged’ to apply – perhaps when jobseekers’ preferred choices are not available? Someone should do a little ethnographic work in these places to see how the application forms are offered, what is said.

This type of Rescue recurs regularly. A year ago I published a list of JobCentre jobs that included sex-industry related jobs like adult party planner, adult retail staff, bar staff, dancers, adult chatline operators, models, warehouse workers, escorts, masseuses, topless TV actors, webcam workers, semi-nude butler, nude cleaner, kissogram deliverer. A UK government consultation ended by allowing the job adverts so why does it continue to be such a ‘scandalous’ issue?

British job centres offering porn work for unemployed women

Laura Trowbridge, 13 May 2010, Digital Journal

Government-run Jobcentre Plus offices in the United Kingdom are encouraging unemployed women to apply for work on X-rated websites. This policy is sparking a great deal of outrage and demands for the job adverts to be removed. Women seeking clerical jobs were given applications for online sex jobs after they visited Jobcentre Plus offices in Birmingham, Warwickshire and Shropshire, England.

The unemployed women are told they can earn up to £700 a week if they strip naked on webcams, engaged in sexually explicit conversations with customers, and perform sex acts. The adult agency Faceclick recruiting for the work tells applicants to perform “activities that you feel comfortable with” while naked in front of the webcam.

One 19-year-old woman, requesting to remain anonymous, said she was shocked a taxpayer-funded government agency was recruiting for the sex industry. She said: “My job in a call center is a fixed-term contract that’s coming to an end and I’ve just taken out a car loan so I’m desperate for work. But I’m not so desperate that I’m prepared to perform disgusting acts on an internet sex line.”

Sky News contacted the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). A spokeswoman for the DWP said: “We are aware of public concern about advertising these vacancies. We have undertaken a public consultation on this issue and we are reviewing existing policy in light of the responses received.” She added that before 2003, the Jobcentre Plus’s policy was to refuse all job vacancies from the adult entertainment industry. But the policy was challenged in the High Court by Ann Summers, the sex toy and lingerie business, which argued it should be allowed to advertise in Jobcentres. They won their case.

6 thoughts on “If you don’t want the porn work, you don’t answer the advert: another aspect of the Rescue Industry

  1. Ole

    OMG!!! The job centers are passing on information about available JOBS to people seeking jobs!!! Someone must interfere and stop this, immediately!

    Sarcasm aside. There are actually situations where job-seekers are not allowed to say no to available jobs. People on unemployment in various countries in Europe can be forced to apply to all incoming offers whether they like them or not. Thus, I remember a case a few years ago where a woman in Germany refused to apply for an open position as a prostitute (in a state where prostitution is legal and taxed) and got punished by her job-center who cut her off from her unemployment check!

    Of course, she could have applied formally while letting the employer know that she wasn’t actually interested. The brothel that put up the job offer was interviewed and stated that of course they won’t hire anyone who is forced (by the city job-center or otherwise) to apply or work there. Nonetheless, in some places putting a job-offer in a job-center can mean that some people will be forced to apply to the jobs. That doesn’t seem to be the case here though. Just people being offended by reality.

    Reply
  2. Wendy

    “I remember a case a few years ago where a woman in Germany refused to apply for an open position as a prostitute (in a state where prostitution is legal and taxed) and got punished by her job-center who cut her off from her unemployment check! ”

    That doesn’t seem to have ever actually happened. It was a piece of English tabloid media sensationalism.

    Reply
  3. SJ

    People being forced into sex work by the government is definitely a myth; a hypothetical question that’s treated by the press as if it actually happens. I had a look into this a while ago, and apart from a couple of quickly corrected administrative mistakes, it doesn’t look like anything like that has happened in Britain or Germany.

    As for Britain’s jobcentres, in my experience you aren’t told to apply for any particular jobs by the staff. You search for jobs yourself on their terminals, taking the ones you’re interested in to a member of staff for more information. If you don’t want to apply for a job in the sex industry then you can simply ignore that search result and look for something else.

    When you sign up at the jobcentre, the staff will ask you what kind of work you’re looking for and note it on their system, and in my experience they never push you to apply for anything that you’ve stated is unsuitable.

    Reply
  4. Pauls birmingham jobs

    It sounds like a very fun job for the right kind of personality and perhaps someone who doesn’t have many links in this country, so someone foreign would be more suitable and would appeal to the public more.

    Reply

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