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DISCRIMINATION

Porn shop internship costs Swedish man his job

A man from Skellefteå in northern Sweden who lost his job as a personal care assistant because of a part-time internship at a local porn shop has accused his former employer of discrimination.

Published: 8 October 2009 14:31 CEST

“I feel humiliated and hung out to dry as if I were a sex addict,” Niclas Nilsson told The Local.

Nilsson had enjoyed a satisfying six months of part-time work with Frösunda Assistans, a personal care assistant staffing agency.

“The best job I’d ever had,” he said.

But as Nilsson’s job wasn’t full time, the local public employment office (Arbetsförmedlingen) told him he needed to find something to do to fill out the rest of his work week.

Wanting to find something quickly that would fit into his erratic schedule as a personal care assistant, Nilsson inquired with Erotic Video, a local porn shop claiming to have “northern Sweden’s largest selection of erotic films and sex toys”.

“I knew they were short on staff there,” he said, explaining that he thought he had found the perfect solution to his employment dilemma.

Not long after Nilsson began working behind the counter at Erotic Video, his boss at the staffing agency caught wind of the porn shop internship.

“He didn’t think it was appropriate for me to be working there, so he cut my hours and took me out of the staffing rotation,” said Nilsson.

“I was disappointed and irritated,” he added, explaining that, up until that point, he had received encouraging signs that he would be able work full-time.

Instead he was told he was no longer suitable to work at Frösunda Assistans.

Nilsson doesn’t see the problem with splitting his time between caring for the elderly and collecting cash from people paying for pornography.

“There’s nothing inappropriate about it as long as I keep the two separate. It was just something on the side, and as long as I was doing my other job well, I don’t think it should matter what I do in my personal time,” he said.

The father of three said he considers his boss’s handling of the matter “very unprofessional”.

“And losing my job over it was just one more blow below the belt,” he said.

Nilsson has now filed a complaint with Sweden’s Equality Ombudsman (Diskrimineringsombudsmannen – DO) alleging actions taken by his supervisor at Frösunda Assistans constitute discrimination.

“I’m out of work because of my internship and that’s wrong. My internship shouldn’t result in me losing my job,” Nilsson wrote in his complaint.

Calls by The Local to Frösunda Assistans for comment were not immediately returned.

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'Sweden should apologise to Tornedalian minority': Truth commission releases report

Stockholm’s policy of assimilation in the 19th and 20th centuries “harmed the minority and continues to hinder the defence of its language, culture and traditional livelihoods,” the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Tornedalians, Kvens and Lantalaiset said in an article published in Sweden’s main daily Dagens Nyheter.

“Amends must be made in order to move forward,” it said, adding that “acknowledging the historic wrongdoings” should be a first step.

The commission, which began work in June 2020, was to submit a final report to the government on Wednesday.

Tornedalen is a geographical area in northeastern Sweden and northwestern Finland. The Tornedalian, Kven and Lantalaiset minority groups are often grouped under the name Tornedalians, who number around 50,000 in Sweden.

The commission noted that from the late 1800s, Tornedalian children were prohibited from using their mother tongue, meänkieli, in school and forced to use Swedish, a ban that remained in place until the 1960s.

From the early 1900s, some 5,500 Tornedalian children were sent away to Lutheran Church boarding schools “in a nationalistic spirit”, where their language and traditional dress were prohibited.

Punishments, violence and fagging were frequent at the schools, and the Tornedalian children were stigmatised in the villages, the commission said.

“Their language and culture was made out to be something shameful … (and) their self-esteem and desire to pass on the language to the next generation was negatively affected.”

The minority has historically made a living from farming, hunting, fishing and reindeer herding, though their reindeer herding rights have been limited over the years due to complexities with the indigenous Sami people’s herding rights.

“The minority feels that they have been made invisible, that their rights over their traditional livelihoods have been taken away and they now have no power of influence,” the commission wrote.

It recommended that the meänkieli language be promoted in schools and public service broadcasting, and the state “should immediately begin the process of a public apology”.

The Scandinavian country also has a separate Truth Commission probing discriminatory policies toward the Sami people.

That report is due to be published in 2025.

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