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

[adders.livejournal.com]

Well, yes they are practicing descrimination - they're descriminating against the guy for having a religious belief.

They're not discriminating between religions, but between people with religious beliefs and those without.

That said, as a Christian who had strong views about the Sabbath, he probably should have been looking for another job anyway...

[andrewducker]

It does seem unfair to lose your job because of a change in working hours. If they'd already had those working practices when he applied, it would seem pretty reasonable.

And the question of "How much do you have to allow for other people's feelings and beliefs." is one that plagues me on a semi-regular basis.

[xquiq.livejournal.com]

They're not discriminating between religions, but between people with religious beliefs and those without.

This is true, but as I said below, very often in accomdating a particular set of individuals, there's tacit discrimination against another group, who will have their degree of flexibility reduced. While I (mostly) understand this for families, I have a hard time with it for a particular belief.

Another, perhaps more philosophical point is: what makes a belief worthy of accomodation? Does it have to be widely held or codified in a particular text? How old must that text be? Must it be religious in nature and in any case, what defines that?

I think flexibility is good, but the more it's defined at a macro-level, the less flexibility there will be locally. I don't think it's the place of politicians to define what is and is not a belief worthy of accomodation at this level.