Work has been a little insane recently - we have a trial in a few weeks, and so it has been 7 days a week for a while now.
What this has brought to mind is the interaction between religious beliefs and the workplace, and in particular two questions:
[ul]
[li]How much should employers be required to accomodate employees’ religious beliefs in setting work schedules?[/li][li]Have people with strict religious based beliefs as to work timing suffered career wise as a result?[/li][/ul]
Our trial team is a hodgepodge of various beliefs, and the issue hasn’t arisen. And I have no doubt that we would attempt to work round any issues that did come up. It would be possible, for example, that someone could do extra work on the days surrounding his or her mandated day off, and still get the same work done in the week. However, because much of our work is collaborative, that would certainly impact the other team members. It’s also not the same for jobs where presence at the workplace is essential.
Should religious preferences be given priority over other preferences in making schedules? Should they overcome, for example, contract negotiated seniority rules? Should a person who wants Sunday off to go to Church be higher up in the pecking order than a divorced father who wants that day to see his kids? How about than a person who has season tickets and wants to go to the game?
Over here lots of accomodation is made. While most businesses do not close at prayer time, people can easily go on breaks for 10-15 minutes to pray. In some small shops you’ll find them left unattended during prayer times… often not locked up. Everyone gets Friday off and the second day off depends - Thursday or Saturday tho they are trying to standardize on Saturday.
In my experience it all depends. For someone truly religious, for which these accomodations really matter (e.g. orthodox Jews), these agreements should be specified before accepting employment.
A Pakistani co-worker lived in Saudi Arabia as a child. He was amazed that gold merchants would cover their wares with cloth when they went to prayer–with no fear of theft. But he also mentioned that cutting off of hands thing. Here he was in Houston, working & raising his family. And drinking the occasional beer.
I work in an establishment with an extremely diverse workforce. There’s a Muslim prayer room. Quite a few of our other workers take longer “breaks” to sneak smokes at the bus stop. Or drop by Starbuck’s.
There are accomodations for Orthodox Jews’ work schedules. And optional holidays may be taken–especially if the worker will come in on a “standard” holiday.
However, I’ve never heard a non-Christian complaining about days off around Christmas. They’re just as happy to take the time off as anyone else.
There was a case in Canada some years ago on this issue. A school board treated Christmas and other Christian holidays as paid holidays for all its employees, but required Jewish employees to take unpaid leave to observe the Jewish holidays: Commission scolaire régionale de Chambly v. Bergevin, [1994] 2 S.C.R. 525.
The Supreme Court upheld the arbitrator’s ruling that this practice was discriminatory, since Christians were paid for their holidays but Jews weren’t.
Not quite the same issue as in the OP, since the schools were closed on Christmas day and the Jewish teachers couldn’t offer to work on those days.
They don’t cut off people’s hands here (but can in Sharjah I beleive - the next Emirate to the east). When I first came here in the early 90s it was common to see cars with the keys in the ignition parked in a lot. The religious culture absolutely plays a part in the lack of crime. Dubai is very multi cultural… in the shopping malls there will be Christmas trees and carols, interrupted by the Muslim call to prayer, all while shops are advertising sales for the Hindu Diwali festival.
There’s case law in the US giving religious preferences priority over other preferences. Rescheduling other people despite seniority was found, IIRC, to be a reasonable accomodation of someone’s religious beliefs - Seventh Day Adventist I seem to remember.
That all smacks to a large extent of establishment to me. The problem being, if you don’t have that requirement, its only the minority religions who are going to get shafted, because the adherents of those religions are the ones asking for something different to the norm.
I’d be interested to hear from any NY lawyers, for example, where I would think the proportion of orthodox Jewish attorneys to be significantly higher than in DC, to see how this is handled both at a management and team level.
And An Arky, though it is 7 (long) days a week at the moment, trial legal work does have the big advantage of lots of down time too…
I think the big problem is not accommodation but discrimination, hence the laws.
At one time, there were large companies that expressly put on their applications things like what holidays you could work on, so they could exclude Jews without stating it in black and white.
I don’t think that religion should get any special priority. I think it’s fairer to simply give people a number of paid holidays, and let them pre-schedule and use them as they see fit. If person A wants to use a day to go to a religious holiday, and Person B to a football game, I see no difference. On the other hand, if whatever he’s doing that day is so important that he can’t skip a day to go to a game, I don’t think that he should be allowed to for a religious event either; saying that it does amounts to a claim that religion gives you permission to screw people over, or that whatever you need him for isn’t really as urgent as you say.
I generally agree with you, but unfortunately the law doesn’t at the moment, in that it does prioritize religious time off in a way I think is a flagrant violation of the Estabishment clause.
However, there is a problem with your/my solution - it is minority religions that will get the short end of the stick on this. The majority religion in most countries, however much it may bitch and moan, tends not to need any degree of legal protection. People will still, by default, in the US, generally have Sundays and Christmas off. Those who seek other days off will not be so lucky.
I’m a SOCAS hardcore believer. But it does run the distinct possibility of turning into a license for discrimination against minorities, and I don’t know what, if anything, can be done about that while still maintaining a hard line definition of the Establishment Clause.
That works up to a point. The problems tend to start when person A wants Thursday off for a religious holiday, person B wants Thursday off for some other reason and they can’t both take Thursday off.Different places I’ve worked have had different policies to handle this situation, and although they worked well most of the time, there have been problems with all of them.
That was exactly the problem in the Supreme Court of Canada case I cited earlier - Christians would always get Sundays, Christmas and Easter off with pay, but non-Christians had to take leave without pay for their holidays.
Well the simple solution there would be to follow whatever practice would be in place if person A and person B both wanted the same day off in any other situation. Presumably there is a company policy based on seniority, or first person who applies, or whatever.
In the present legal environment, however, it may be the case that person A must be given priority over person B. And that strikes me as a tad unfair.
I can remember a case where Walmart denied an employee off time to go to church on Sunday. The store kept scheduling him on Sunday and he kept saying he couldn’t work on Sunday due to church. The time came when they scheduled him on Sunday and he didn’t show up and was fired. He sued and won $100,000 and his job back if he wanted it, probably didn’t. I thought it was a fair call. I know Walmart sent notices to all their stores saying let anyone off on Sunday that wants off for church.
I would be interested in a cite on that case, Lekatt. If Walkmart was deliberately scheduling the employee so he could not go to Church, it would be a good decision. If they were simply following their regular procedure, and not allowing him to pick his own schedule and thereby force other employees to work on Sunday in his stead, then it is a lousy decision, though one probably mandated by (arguably unconstitutional) laws.
