The company operates in a country where the vast majority of people are non-Muslim. The owner should have made accommodations for his non-Muslim employees.
If a non-Muslim business owner has a business in a Muslim country, don’t you think he should make accommodations for his Muslim employees, such as a halal kitchen, or accommodating for daily prayers, even if his employees were majority non-Muslim? It’s simply a courtesy.
In this case, the business owner was not accommodating of his non-Muslim employees. Therefore, he’s the asshole. He didn’t have to make such a strict policy and didn’t have to resort to firing someone. Compromises could have taken place to be fair to everyone.
Her religious beliefs were not compromised an any way. There is no Holy Pepperoni Day in the Catholic church. They requested that she refrain from a single totally non-essential activity on company property, because it was offensive to the majority of employees there. They asked her nicely once, and she did it again.
Is pork-eating a religion? Is there a religion that mandates eating pork for lunch?
How about this: I am employed at Jesus Saves, Brake Repairs, Inc. The owner and the majority of the staff are practicing Christians, in fact they practice some othordox branch of Christianity. They don’t mind me being an atheist and they refrain from trying to convert me. One day I start singing Michael Jackson’s latest hit Rain Fire on Them Christians Belzeebu My Dark Lord. The owner tells me to please refrain from singing ‘that’ song at work. I could sing any other song until my voice is hoarse if I so wish, or sing MJ’s latest hit outside the company any time. I do it again, another warning. I do it again and get fired… was I been a jerk?
Clearly, the employee who is told he is in violation of some workplace rule (regardless of the rule itself) and then continues to violate the rule is wrong.
However, the employer might also be wrong if the rule itself is wrong (that is, if the rule is illegal or discriminatory or whatever). The employee’s recourse in such a situation is to escalate their concern to higher management within the company or to an appropriate government body (the EEOC comes to mind) to have the rule changed.
This may result in the employee having to quit their job or submit to the rule until such time as the rule changes. I grant you that this can be a hardship and is real pain, but continuing to violate the rule in some sort of “protest action” seems a little silly to me.
By forcing her to observe THEIR religious practice, she was denied her own freedom of religious expression (which may or may not have been NO religious expression). They said it was based on a religious tenet. By their own admission it is religion-based. They made no accommodation for her.
There may or may not be a religion that involves pork. Just because it isn’t one of the “big five” doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist. If a religion can exclude foods, they can INCLUDE them as well.
And as far as non-essential goes, EVERYTHING in religion is non-essential. You can talk yourself into the grand importance of a ritual, but the avoidance of pork is a religious invention – not essential. Beside the fact that they weren’t being asked to heat her BLT. They were simply asked to tolerate her choice of food.
It’s called a uniform. Employers are allowed to ask their employees to wear uniforms. Even the tinest restaurants have some sort of unifying t-shirt or apron. It’s not the same thing at all.
I once worked for a catholic (family business). For the holiday party, he ordered a ham. I reminded him that out of the 50 employees, there were at least two jews. He basically said “tough shit…we’re having ham and only ham”. No offer to accommodate her religious practice with a small order of chicken or meatballs. Was this discriminatory?
And again…please read the article. She was forbidden to bring pork on the company premises. That means she was not allowed to pick up a canned ham on the way to work. She was not allowed to pick up a breakfast biscuit on her way in the office, even if she consumed it in the parking lot in her car. She was not allowed to sit outside on a summer day and eat a ham sandwich. This has absolutely nothing to do with contaminating kitchen utensils. It has everything to do with religious butt-inski-ism.
The point that I’d been making, which nyctea scandiaca seemed to understand, was that the original question about ‘requiring female employees to wear scarves’ was not specific enough to allow for an equally blanket approval or condemnation. That specific scenario was simply to illustrate where a business would have a completely legitimate reason for insisting on workers following a visible, or outward, part of the code of a specific religion.
By the way, Kalhoun, how do you feel about freedom of religion as being used to defend people who are fired for not being able to work on their Sabbath?
Then she can argue in court that Catholism mandates she eat pork every day for lunch in the company’s ground.
She is Catholic, I was raised Catholic and I don’t remember anything about eating pork been part of our religious tenets.
Don’t you see the irony? You are arguing that her ‘non-essential and still unexistant ritual of eating pork for lunch ‘in the company’s grounds’ is more important than the MAJORITY OF THE EMPLOYEES’ right to also follow another non-essential ritual. You can’t have it both ways.
If her religion (and she is Catholic) mandated eating pork every day then she should have talked about it with her employer. This seems not to be the case.
It’s intrusive, where eating a BLT is not. The muslims were offended by the CONCEPT of pork…to the point that they tried to control what a non-muslim ate. It’s oppressive. What would the muslims have done if she decided to take communion in the lunchroom every day? Would that have been acceptable? I sincerely doubt they’d have sat still for that. What if she was a jew and wore traditional religous symbols like a star of David or a prayer shawl? Do you see these people allowing that?
I would consider this “costuming” in the case of an ethnic restaurant. This isn’t religious.
For starters, I think it is the employees responsibility to make a religious limitation known up front. After all, they are a minority and cannot assume the rest of the world knows of or practices their limitation. If the employer agrees to hire them knowing they need their holy day off, they should not be allowed to dismiss them for that reason. They also have the right to hire someone who is qualified for the job. If they must have someone working on any religion’s sabbath, then they are free to hire people who qualify for that schedule.
Being fired for having a religious calendar would be wrong. Whether it was Satanic or Wiccan or Christian or Jewish or Muslim. If they were targeting the Satanist specifically because of her religion, that would be wrong.
Now if the office forbade all personal calendars or personal effects or all religious items, that’s permissible.
If it’s in your cubical (which is a private area), I’ve got no problem with it. People decorate their cubes with all sorts of personal expression. I think it will offend the religious folks (but hell…what doesn’t?). I don’t think you should get fired for it. I happen to work for a gigantic retailer who INSISTS on the religious choir belting out baby jesus tunes in the common area of our campus. I’m annoyed by the assumption that all 5,000 of us want to hear someone else’s religious beliefs blaring through the atrium during our noon meal. Infinitely more intrusive than a ham sandwich. Yet, I continue to get the fuck over it.
It’s not her religion that is limiting! It’s her employer’s religion that is limiting what she can or cannot do! His religion is oppressing her freedom of choice (freedom of non-religion or religion).
