It's certainly illegal to ask about pork and alcohol as a racial or religious screening question, without regard to whether the job requires a willingness to handle the materials in question.
Likewise, it is illegal to compel someone to work a specific counter against their beliefs: that's constructive dismissal and a race-relations issue.
What is more invidious is how far the employer is required to consider adapting the role - at interview, and at work - to accommodate specific religious preferences and proscriptions. Taken to extremes, pork butchers could be compelled to interview and hire candidates who cannot work in the shop at all, under the threat of a discrimination case; taken too leniently, a cynical and racist employer can exclude all Moslems and Jews from managerial positions by insisting that the training programme includes a spell on every counter in the shop. Or just not employ them at all.
There are people eager to push the boundaries at both extremes: legal chancers parading their religious beliefs as a threat to sue all comers unless they are paid to sit with their arms folded all day in a shop entirely cleared of material deemed offensive to the Faithful; and covert racists, unscrupulous employers with a hire-and-fire agenda, and loopy journalists, all trying to deregulate to such a degree that any evil act is legally permissible.
As a result, the middle ground is being eroded by legalistic and prescriptive regulatory 'solutions' that impose so much red tape and legal risk that there is no profitable trade.
A further question is, of course, whether a shop that can find no K'fir staff willing to handle pork, alcohol and tobacco in its catchment area has a worthwhile local demand for the stuff anyway.
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Date: 2007-01-25 11:12 am (UTC)Likewise, it is illegal to compel someone to work a specific counter against their beliefs: that's constructive dismissal and a race-relations issue.
What is more invidious is how far the employer is required to consider adapting the role - at interview, and at work - to accommodate specific religious preferences and proscriptions. Taken to extremes, pork butchers could be compelled to interview and hire candidates who cannot work in the shop at all, under the threat of a discrimination case; taken too leniently, a cynical and racist employer can exclude all Moslems and Jews from managerial positions by insisting that the training programme includes a spell on every counter in the shop. Or just not employ them at all.
There are people eager to push the boundaries at both extremes: legal chancers parading their religious beliefs as a threat to sue all comers unless they are paid to sit with their arms folded all day in a shop entirely cleared of material deemed offensive to the Faithful; and covert racists, unscrupulous employers with a hire-and-fire agenda, and loopy journalists, all trying to deregulate to such a degree that any evil act is legally permissible.
As a result, the middle ground is being eroded by legalistic and prescriptive regulatory 'solutions' that impose so much red tape and legal risk that there is no profitable trade.
A further question is, of course, whether a shop that can find no K'fir staff willing to handle pork, alcohol and tobacco in its catchment area has a worthwhile local demand for the stuff anyway.