Junkmen for Jesus, Cooks for the Koran, Tellers for the Torah?
…Making some provisions for worship, like providing an empty room for Bible study at work, for example, isn’t entirely new, Saunders explains. What’s new, he adds, is the magnitude of worker requests:
“Now people are saying I don’t want to do my job because it doesn’t fit in with my faith practice.”
So find a job that suits you to begin with. Now there’s a concept.
I wonder if an application had boxes that asked, “Do your peculiar religious practices preclude you from performing ANY function within the confines of this company? If you check ‘yes’, EXPLAIN/CLARIFY. Does it require you have extraordinary access/accomodation to a separate area/unscheduled breaks for purposes of worship during your shift? If you check ‘yes’, EXPLAIN/CLARIFY”, would be legal. I know you can’t discriminate on the BASIS of religion, but you sure should be able to call the shots if said religion sweeps its way onto your showroom/retail/production floor and disrupts the whole enterprise. And I believe an employer is entitled to know that there is something said prospective employee believes which will shortly have said employer dealing with chaos, mad customers and talking to the EEOC, while his formerly hardworking regular employees are now pissed off and looking for something for them. (Like belonging to the Church of Nicotiana Virginianus, for instance. That was always the Marine Corps scam for undeserved breaks.)
…”Religions have become more prominent in how they want freedom to be expressed in the workplace, and we have a ‘what’s in it for me’ kind of thing.”
If you want to run your little Christian bookstore and play that God AWFUL music, so be it. It’s clearly identified as such, any prospective employee has an idea what’s required/tolerated and it’s also clearly my right not to enter. But if I hire you to work the line at What-a-Burger and it’s time for the bacon chicken sandwich promotion, which you then tell me is unclean and you’re not touching it or any surface that might have interacted with the pork fat…well.
I think the employee should have the problem.
Morality | tree hugging sister | 
October 2, 2007 9:30 am
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Colossians 3:22 Slaves, in all things obey those who are your masters on earth, not with external service, as those who merely please men, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord.
My Bible says that you are to serve your employer, and if you can’t find a job where you can.
How stupid can some people be? Find a job where you don’t have to make these ethical choices. If you’re against birth control, don’t become a pharmacist. If you’re an extra-observant Muslim, don’t take a job where you may have to scan a pound of bacon. Dammit, people.
I can’t imagine anything I’d be told to do in my career that would violate my ethics to the point that I felt my faith and my career were incompatible – but if that day ever came, the first thing I’d do would be to brush up my c.v., and the second thing I’d do would be to draft a letter of resignation…
Of course, I’m also not of the activist persuasion, where I want the world to bend to my attitudes…