Religious rites in the workplace
 

A case currently making the news in Britain involves an employee in a residential care home who lost her job because she refused to work on Sundays due to her Christian beliefs, lost her original tribunal against the London borough who employed her, but is now taking her case to an appeal court.

[URL]http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/10/20/celestina-mbam-christian-sue-sunday_n_4132319.html[/URL]

This is, of course, a specific case on which the courts need to decide.

But what about the more general question of whether, and to what extent, employers should take account of employees' religious requirements such as time off for religious festivals, breaks to be allowed to pray at particular times, and the right to wear certain items of clothing required by their religion during work time? Should employers be required to take their religious workers' needs into account at all? And if so, where should it stop?

[QUOTE=Brian-E;357193]A case currently making the news in Britain involves an employee in a residential care home who lost her job because she refused to work on Sundays due to her Christian beliefs, lost her original tribunal against the London borough who employed her, but is now taking her case to an appeal court.

[URL]http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/10/20/celestina-mbam-christian-sue-sunday_n_4132319.html[/URL]

This is, of course, a specific case on which the courts need to decide.

But what about the more general question of whether, and to what extent, employers should take account of employees' religious requirements such as time off for religious festivals,
[/QUOTE]

If I take time off for a religious holiday it counts as a vacation day.
If a Christian takes time off for Good Friday, it counts as a vacation day.

etc. This is policy at my company. People are allowed to take such days.


[QUOTE]
breaks to be allowed to pray at particular times,
[/QUOTE]

If it is a salaried position, it should not matter. [although one should not
be allowed to interrupt an important meeting. If I am giving a presentation,
I should not be allowed to hold everyone else up by leaving.]



If one works under a time
clock, then it should count as part of one's normal break time. One should
not get EXTRA break time for such things. Note that if one is working on
a production line, and someone is always needed at your station, then
breaks become available only when someone else is available to fill in
for you. i.e. breaks are rotated throughout the day. One should be allowed
to swap a time-slot with someone else, but if everyone wants to go off
and pray at some specific time, then there would be no one to man the
assembly line. Such breaks should be allowed ONLY WHEN FEASIBLE.

[QUOTE]
and the right to wear certain items of clothing required by their religion during work time?
[/QUOTE]

Not IMO. I don't want other people shoving (even implicitly) their
religion in my face. I have the right to be free from religious harassment
while I am working. Shoving your religion in someone else's face can be
construed as harassment.


[QUOTE]
Should employers be required to take their religious workers' needs into account at all? And if so, where should it stop?[/QUOTE]

On a case by case basis.

My own view is that religion belongs at home or in church. It does
not belong in the workplace. But if someone wants to close their office
door and (say) pray at 10AM, it does me no harm. OTOH, I don't want
to see "Jesus is Lord" posters when I walk into someone's office.

I suppose it all depends on how ostentatious it is.

[QUOTE=R.D. Silverman;357196]My own view is that religion belongs at home or in church. It does not belong in the workplace.[/QUOTE]

I don't entirely disagree. But, then, nor do I entirely agree... (Imagine that.)

My own view is people should be able to revel themselves as to their various beliefs publicly so long as it isn't outrageous nor dangerous to others.

[QUOTE=R.D. Silverman;357196]But if someone wants to close their office door and (say) pray at 10AM, it does me no harm.[/QUOTE]

Absolutely. Their space is, by definition, their space.

[QUOTE=R.D. Silverman;357196]OTOH, I don't want to see "Jesus is Lord" posters when I walk into someone's office.[/QUOTE]

Hey, try to spend a bit of time here in Barbados... The good news is if the Christian World View is correct, I've been well watched over.... :smile:

[QUOTE=chalsall;357202]I don't entirely disagree. But, then, nor do I entirely agree... (Imagine that.)

My own view is people should be able to revel themselves as to their various beliefs publicly so long as it isn't outrageous nor dangerous to others.
[/QUOTE]

Define "outrageous". Outrage is in the mind of the beholder.
It is not well defined. And different people will find different things
to be "outrageous".

[QUOTE=R.D. Silverman;357207]Define "outrageous".[/QUOTE]

Thank you -- an important point. I'm using my internal definition in my model.

I have no problem with anyone wearing a symbol they find important upon themselves, so long as it is subtle and sincere.

Someone showing up covered in rain-bows and lisping, on the hand, I have no time for.

I would say it's entirely up to the employer. Employees should have no hold over their employers. The reason they actually do is because the employer sees the benefits of having a good working environment over having a super strict one. For example, your employer CAN refuse to pay you while you're on bathroom breaks, but it looks bad, plus people will be working poorly on account of they need to go pee. It's just common sense.

If the employer says "You have to work Sundays or else" then you either work Sundays or you get fired. People are just getting really uppity over this kind of thing, and they're suing "on principle." No. You're just mad because someone took advantage of the power they have over BY BEING THE PERSON GIVING YOU YOUR DAMN PAYCHECK.

This care provider will easily find work elsewhere if they are any good. They'll find some person who isn't an asshole and let them take Sundays off. Did I say asshole? Yes. Their boss is a jerk for being that way but being a jerk is not against the law, nor is it unethical. It's bad business.

There have been court cases where an employer used Christian beliefs to refuse health insurance to female married employees, because that was supposed to be their husband's responsibility. That was ruled to cross the line into discrimination.

[QUOTE=TheMawn;357217]I would say it's entirely up to the employer.[/QUOTE]

I respectfully disagree.

I would argue it's entirely up to the aggregate employees.

Unfortunately, said employees are not terribly organized in relation to their output's marketplace.

I hope that makes sense....

[QUOTE=chalsall;357221]I respectfully disagree.

I would argue it's entirely up to the aggregate employees.

Unfortunately, said employees are not terribly organized in relation to their output's marketplace.

I hope that makes sense....[/QUOTE]

It makes more sense than the original post deserved. :)

[QUOTE=jasonp;357219]There have been court cases where an employer used Christian beliefs to refuse health insurance to female married employees, because that was supposed to be their husband's responsibility. That was ruled to cross the line into discrimination.[/QUOTE]
Hmm, I hadn't thought of it the other way round. Indeed, you can also ask how much [I]employees[/I] should be forced to take account of the religion of their [I]employer[/I]! I take a very dim view of [I]that[/I] potential requirement indeed.

It reminds me a bit of something RDS posted in a different thread in the lounge some time ago:
[QUOTE=R.D. Silverman;331941]see:

[URL]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/01/teri-james-pregnant-woman-fired-premarital-sex-christian-school_n_2790085.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular[/URL]

A summary:

"A former employee at a Christian college has enlisted the help of high-profile attorney Gloria Allred to sue a California
school that allegedly fired her for engaging in premarital sex, NBC's "Today" reports. In a bizarre twist, the school
reportedly went on to offer the pregnant woman's job to her then-fiance.

Teri James, 29, told the news outlet that she did sign a two-page contract with San Diego Christian College that
included a provision agreeing not to engage in "sexually immoral behavior including premarital sex."

"I needed a job in this economy and so I never thought that anything would happen," James explained to "Today."

But James said she was humiliated after being pulled into her supervisor's office last fall, where she was asked
if she was pregnant and then was let go. After James lost her job, she claims the school offered a position to
her now-husband, even though they were aware he'd had sex before getting married, too. "


So they fired HER for having pre-marital sex, then turned around and
tried to hire HIM knowing that he did the same thing!

Talk about intolerance toward women!!!!!!

Typical Christian intolerance.[/QUOTE]

---

Back on the subject of the rights of [I]employees[/I] to have their religion taken into account in the workplace, while I don't agree with the general tone of TheMawn's posting because I believe that certain basic employee rights need legal protection, I don't think that the right to have special consideration of religious requirements comes into that category. My view is that an employer ought to (but should not be legally required to) take religious considerations into account provided that this does not adversely affect the business and does not give individual employees special privileges over others. Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society in the UK, sums up my views exactly in this article:

[URL]http://www.secularism.org.uk/blog/2013/10/chaos-in-the-workplace-will-follow-if-this-demand-for-religious-privilege-succeeds[/URL]

[QUOTE][I][B]If an employer can reasonably accommodate religious requests without disrupting their business or disadvantaging their other staff, we have no objection. But if they can't, then employers should have the right to say "no" argues Terry Sanderson.[/B][/I][/QUOTE]

Wow, Chappy...


To try to reiterate my point of view... I highly dislike unions because where I am the public sector ones (teachers, nurses, in particular) absolutely dick their employer around, which means some pile of cartilage is forced into making dumb decisions with my tax money. The situations we've gotten ourselves into with nurses and teachers is absolutely ridiculous, and I correlate that 100% to employees literally having more privileges than their employers.

I don't think employees should own their employers, nor should I expect employers to own their employees. The relationship is entirely give and take, and it should stay that way. It's good. The give and take means that there is some bending in either direction. The employer can bend to religious practices and let them dictate the terms of the contract, to an extent, or the employee can bend to the terms of the employer.

An employer who does very little bending is going to scare away potential employees who don't want to have to bend to him or her. He or she is also scaring away current employees, who can go find a job somewhere else for someone who isn't an ass. The employer can sit there losing employees or he can make a better working environment. On the other hand, an employee who does little bending is shooting themselves too. Anyone who is expecting their employees to take the Sunday shift once in a while is going to stay away from this person, and think twice about taking someone else who follows the same practice. It looks bad on all Christians that one Christian is pushing the envelope.


Over the summer, I did a lot of work with a Roman Catholic girl. This one was great. She had her opinions and beliefs and that was it. Once in a while, we worked closely with another who was a lot pushier with his beliefs. Long story short, we'd gotten into a discussion about boycotting and he'd mentioned he boycotted a particular hardware store because they supported gay rights.

Yep. I had to try real hard to not let this harm my opinion of anyone who is part of a system that officially stands against homosexuality. The girl I worked with was also completely shocked to hear this and was actually frustrated because she said it made her look bad because she was associated with him.


In the same way, now that this has made some waves in the media, anyone looking to hire is going to have to seriously consider the effect of certain religious practices on the environment they're trying to set up. Maybe the five-minute prayers at random times of the day aren't a huge deal, but maybe not working on a Sunday is. She's a care provider. People need care all the time. I don't understand how this person can justify taking Sunday off when there's people who need care on Sundays too. And that's why the employer got rid of her. I don't think anyone WANTS the Sunday shift, but that's part of the job, and she's not being a team player.


The decent thing to do would have been to quit gracefully and go find work elsewhere. Unfortunately, people have their complexes and are expecting to get a competitive wage AND dictate the terms of their work. It's like they have a RIGHT to have the job they want.

Peoples' [I]actual[/I] rights are to search for work and be allowed to sell their trade. They can sell themselves as "I don't work on Sundays" and accept the hit to their pay (or to the demand for their work; same thing, really) OR accept that they have to work on Sundays to get the best job. They can't have both. Saying that they should is idiotic.