No smoke without flamewar

[j4]

You may recall a bit of a debate recently about whether Christians should be forced to let gay people stay in their bed-and-breakfasts, in which people invented various analogous situations (as people are wont to do) as aids to debate. Here's one we didn't need to invent, from The Times' News in Brief on Monday:

Smoker put out

A smoker was denied cigarettes at a store because the assistant, a Muslim, said it was against her religion to sell tobacco. The woman smoker, 31, had tried to buy cigarettes at W. H. Smith in Cambridge. The company said that the customer should have realised the assistant was Muslim and would not sell tobacco.

How did the Times know that the woman was a smoker? She might have just been buying cigarettes for a friend. ... No, wait. Should smokers be allowed to refuse to be served by a Muslim? ... No, that's not it either. Hang on, I've got it: How can you tell if the checkout assistant is a Muslim? There isn't a punchline, but there probably would be if you started making assumptions like that based on, ooh, I don't know, the c*l**r of someone's sk*n, or their h**dg**r.

I would say "it's not just me, is it?" but a friend recently said (in an entirely other context) "I too spend a lot of time in culture shock at what's supposed to be my own culture." I think that sums it up, really.

Comments

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

Way back in the day when I worked in a supermarket, every single applicant was asked if they minded handling meat, pork, and alcohol - and they asked with particular care when hiring Hindus and Moslems. I have no doubt whatsoever that all who answered 'yes' or equivocated were rejected.

This is probably illegal today.

In the case of Tesco, that line of questioning has been dropped for sound commercial reasons - if you want low-cost teenage labour that works passably well, washes regularly, can read labels and count the boxes off a lorry, then you absolutely have to employ the descendants of the Raj - because the natives are not only illiterate but untrainable. So Tesco have learned to adapt, and stand above all too many employers who did not; these others to refuse to adapt to a multiracial society, and if it sounds reasonable to discriminate on the grounds of willingness to work at any task, it should be remembered that the implementation at shop-floor level will inevitably involve prejudice and malice, rather than sound business principles and colour-blind commercial judgement.

[k425.livejournal.com]

This is probably illegal today.

Possibly not. The important thing being to make sure that if someone has a problem working with meat/alcohol/whatever you don't put them stacking the booze shelves/behind the meat/deli counter.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

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.

[k425.livejournal.com]

I didn't mention pork. My brother is vegan - while he'd have no trouble working in many areas of a supermarket, he would object to handling meat. Similarly, I can see (recovering) alcoholics not wanting to work in the booze shelves. It's not always about religion.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

Indeed. But vegans and recovering alcoholics are not so well defended by the law as religious and racial minorities. Yiou could, in theory, look at disability legislation for a recovering alcoholic; but objections arising from secular beliefs and issues of conscience are met with the retort "Well, if you don't want to work here, don't."

It is reasonable to discriminate on the basis of peoples' choices and preferences. It is, however, illegal to discriminate on racial and religious grounds - and legally precarious to make HR decisions, for even the soundest of business reasons, that have the effect of racial or religious discrimination.