Days Off?

[andrewducker]

Not sure how I feel about this.  A Christian lost his court case where he claims he was sacked for refusing to work Sundays.  His employers moved to a 7-days shift system and required people to work every day of the week (I assume week on/week off).

On the one hand, if they're discriminating equally against Christians, Muslims, Jews, etc. then it's hard to say that they're practising religious discrimination.  And it's not like I actually agree that there's any _rational_ reason for not working on a Sunday.

I suspect I'm feeling the left-over twinge from when working on a Sunday used to be extremely rare.  If, after all, a sect sprang up that forbade working on Wednesdays I wouldn't expect employers to automatically give people the Wednesday off.  And it's not like we're actually a Christian country any more - church attendance is down to 7.5%.

Dammit, it's my Englishness coming to the fore.  Must...suppress....

Comments

[andrewducker]

But why should they show respect of individual A's beliefs? What if he'd announced he wasn't allowed to work Wednesday's any more? Or that he wasn't allowed to wear head-coverings at all, even in the mine area. Should they always give way to religious beliefs?

And this is one of the ten commandments:
"Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy. You can work during the six weekdays and do all your tasks. But Saturday is the Sabbath to God your Lord. Do not do anything that constitutes work."

Which certainly means that God would like you to take it seriously...

[kurosau.livejournal.com]

Part of the problem, I think, is that the more time goes on, the less this is an issue of them disrespecting a person's religious beliefs, and more an issue of workers being considered a tool that can be used without concern for the person as a human being.

Consider the dustbowl migration of the Oakies in the US during the depression era. Thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands, moved west to find work in California and the other states not suffering from drought. People could get jobs for 3 cents an hour, picking strawberries, only to find that the employer would lower their wage to 2 cents an hour the next day. The employer could say that anyone that objected 'was a red', a communist sympathizer to be hauled away by the police, because they knew that the hundreds of people looking for a job in the area would take it because it was available.

It is, in my opinion, important for us to respect the value of every indivdual human being. Being forced into a situation where we need to give up all of our time because the corporation would find anything less uncivilized is nothing more than tyranny and enslavement.

[andrewducker]

It is, in my opinion, important for us to respect the value of every indivdual human being.

Even when those values conflict with my own? Should I respect the values of people who believe that black people aren't worth as much as white people?

And allowing people to (for instance) have different working patterns because of their beliefs means that other people have to pick up the slack. Means you're discriminating against people for lacking belief.

[kurosau.livejournal.com]

I didn't say values, I said value. As in, a human being is valuable, not as in we should respect christian values. I'm talking more about the fact that business sees you as a dispensible tool that's fit only to be worked until dropping.