Posted                   

quote:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:

quote:

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Originally posted by aumbry:
Well if your employer (if you have one) makes some post contractual changes to your conditions of employment then I expect you will resign without further ado. It is no different than a nurse with strong catholic views being sacked because he or she is suddenly expected to undertake abortions when that was never part of her original remit. If individuals have to change their moral code for fear of losing their jobs because of employers who know full well that they are effectively changing the terms of their employment then that leads eventually to something like the Third Reich.

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From this we gather:

• Replacing the 10 oz. cup with a 12 oz. cup ---> Hitler
• Tranfer to the East Side branch office ---> liquidating the ghettos
• New business cards with new logo ---> Reichstag fire
• Change in paid leave policy ---> Final Solution

Remember kids, if your present day of employment isn't exactly like the one before (and identical to every other day since you took the job) the jackbooted Stormtroopers are just around the corner. Don't say you weren't warned!

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Posted                      

quote:

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Originally posted by aumbry:
None of your examples is a moral decision. Why not take the example of the nurse required to take part in abortions as the point of argument? Or perhaps someone working in a nursing home who at some future date might be required to euthanise (sp?) a patient.

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Posted                      

quote:

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Originally posted by aumbry:

quote:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
From this we gather:

• Replacing the 10 oz. cup with a 12 oz. cup ---> Hitler
• Tranfer to the East Side branch office ---> liquidating the ghettos
• New business cards with new logo ---> Reichstag fire
• Change in paid leave policy ---> Final Solution

Remember kids, if your present day of employment isn't exactly like the one before (and identical to every other day since you took the job) the jackbooted Stormtroopers are just around the corner. Don't say you weren't warned!

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None of your examples is a moral decision.

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Posted                   

quote:

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

quote:

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Originally posted by aumbry:
None of your examples is a moral decision. Why not take the example of the nurse required to take part in abortions as the point of argument? Or perhaps someone working in a nursing home who at some future date might be required to euthanise (sp?) a patient.

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As you;re so keen to have previously-raised examples addressed, perhaps you;d like to answer the one Croesus raised?

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Posted                   

quote:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:

quote:

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Originally posted by aumbry:

quote:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
From this we gather:

• Replacing the 10 oz. cup with a 12 oz. cup ---> Hitler
• Tranfer to the East Side branch office ---> liquidating the ghettos
• New business cards with new logo ---> Reichstag fire
• Change in paid leave policy ---> Final Solution

Remember kids, if your present day of employment isn't exactly like the one before (and identical to every other day since you took the job) the jackbooted Stormtroopers are just around the corner. Don't say you weren't warned!

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None of your examples is a moral decision.

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According to who? Your position is based on the idea that employees are able to substitute their own moral standards for company policy. Why shouldn't we take an employee seriously who claims that a 12 oz. cup is an abomination or that then new corporate logo is insulting to his faith?

I think your position can be summarized as "the law should accommodate my specific moral code, but not things which I personally don't consider to fall under the umbrella of morality". The big problem is that in most pluralisitic, Western societies government has given up the idea of maintaining a Department of Inquisition to patrol the limits of what is and is not a moral decision.

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Posted                      

quote:

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Originally posted by aumbry:
And why don't you administer the thread so that we don't have to suffer abuse from dicks like Mousethief?

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Posted                   

quote:

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

quote:

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Originally posted by aumbry:
And why don't you administer the thread so that we don't have to suffer abuse from dicks like Mousethief?

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Because I'm not a Host. Your turn to answer a question.

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by aumbry:
And why don't you administer the thread so that we don't have to suffer abuse from dicks like Mousethief?

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Posted                   

quote:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:

quote:

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Originally posted by aumbry:
Well Karl you might be letting your employer off the hook if he changes your terms and conditions of employment without your agreement. Why should you be expected to do something you find morally irksome if it was never part of your original contract?

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I'm not sure an individual employee should be allowed to dictate terms like that. For instance, say you were hired as a waitress at a "Whites Only" lunch counter in the late 1950s. A few years later public pressure forces your employer to reverse this policy and racially integrate, allowing all races to be served at your luncheonette. Is the employer obligated open a second, still "Whites Only" counter to accommodate its employees who find integration "morally irksome"? Just allow individual employees to only serve white customers, undercutting the new company policy? From the company's perspective the job hasn't changed (serving food), though some employees would say that it has (serving food to non-whites). I'm not seeing a way that an accommodation could be made in a case like that without drastically undercutting the employer's ability to run his business.

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Posted                   

quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:

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Originally posted by aumbry:

quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:

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Originally posted by aumbry:
that leads eventually to something like the Third Reich.

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You lose. Thanks for playing. There's the door.

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Can you never resist dumb one-liners?

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Against asinine, fucked-up, stupid comments like yours? Probably not.

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by aumbry:

quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:

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Originally posted by aumbry:

quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:

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Originally posted by aumbry:
that leads eventually to something like the Third Reich.

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You lose. Thanks for playing. There's the door.

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Can you never resist dumb one-liners?

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Against asinine, fucked-up, stupid comments like yours? Probably not.

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And that is not a personal attack?

Well after a decade this is the last ever post I make to this website. If you cannot administer it without partiality it does not deserve the time of day.

You can ban me for life for all I care.

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Posted                      

quote:

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Originally posted by aumbry:

quote:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
I'm not sure an individual employee should be allowed to dictate terms like that. For instance, say you were hired as a waitress at a "Whites Only" lunch counter in the late 1950s. A few years later public pressure forces your employer to reverse this policy and racially integrate, allowing all races to be served at your luncheonette. Is the employer obligated open a second, still "Whites Only" counter to accommodate its employees who find integration "morally irksome"? Just allow individual employees to only serve white customers, undercutting the new company policy? From the company's perspective the job hasn't changed (serving food), though some employees would say that it has (serving food to non-whites). I'm not seeing a way that an accommodation could be made in a case like that without drastically undercutting the employer's ability to run his business.

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But what would be the moral grounds for not serving a non-white person?

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Posted                   

quote:

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Originally posted by tclune:

quote:

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Originally posted by aumbry:

quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:

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Originally posted by aumbry:

quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:

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Originally posted by aumbry:
that leads eventually to something like the Third Reich.

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You lose. Thanks for playing. There's the door.

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Can you never resist dumb one-liners?

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Against asinine, fucked-up, stupid comments like yours? Probably not.

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And that is not a personal attack?

Well after a decade this is the last ever post I make to this website. If you cannot administer it without partiality it does not deserve the time of day.

You can ban me for life for all I care.

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Hostly Hat ON
Aumbry, you are not a newbie. You know full well that all discussion of hostly matters is confined to Styx. STOP THIS CRAP NOW.

--Tom Clune, Purgatory Host
Hostly Hat OFF

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Posted                          

quote:

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Originally posted by Evangeline:
The very fact that BA has wasted so much time and resources on trying to stop this woman wearing a cross outside her uniform is, actually outrageous and persuades me that there is something to Eweida's claims. I know Eweida was funded by a Christian lobby group and she and they were pushing this all the way but I would have thought that BA might have had a bit more smarts about them.

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I'm going to come back to this one, because it's wrong by 180 degrees. BA in fact put a lot of time and resources into reviewing and then amending their uniform policy, following Ms Eweida's complaint.

After working for two years without any problem with the policy, she complained, and they agreed a working arrangement while they reviewed the policy (when it must have been tempting to tell her where to get off). Then she started deliberately ignoring that arrangement, so she was offered non-uniform roles at the same pay while the grievance and review were ongoing (again, a remarkably generous offer to a difficult and deliberately provocative employee). She refused those offers, and instead chose to go on unpaid leave. Finally, BA decided after review that their policy could be relaxed to permit her to wear a small cross.

That was all years ago. The time and resources that have been spent were entirely down to Ms Eweida attempting to make a big deal out of this and suing for the loss of earnings when she refused perfectly reasonable equivalents while policy was reviewed, despite receiving a number of donations (more than she would have earned over the period, according to the ECHR judges) thanks to all the publicity. If anyone was dragging this out, it wasn't BA.

And the greatest travesty is that BA's careful and considered accommodation of such an obstructive employee was then held against them as evidence that their existing policy was discriminatory.

To be honest, I thought Lilian Ladele had a better case. She could genuinely claim to have suffered a fundamental change in her job which conflicted with her conscience, with no equivalent accommodation for her beliefs. Whether she should have won is another matter, but she definitely had the best case of the four. The law is an ass.

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The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. - Richard Feynman

A letter to my son about death

Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
What interests me about this, is that some Christians obviously feel that they should be able to break the law. ...

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Posted                      

quote:

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Originally posted by Enoch:
None of these instances was about them insisting on being entitled to break the law.

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Posted                          

quote:

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Originally posted by Enoch:

quote:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
What interests me about this, is that some Christians obviously feel that they should be able to break the law. ...

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No. None of these instances was about them insisting on being entitled to break the law. They are about whether there are, or should be, any limits to an employer's rights to order an employee to go against their own conscience or religion, and to sack them if they don't comply i.e. when at work, does a servant have any title to his or her conscience or is it solely at their master's behest?

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Posted                       

quote:

---

Originally posted by Enoch:

quote:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
What interests me about this, is that some Christians obviously feel that they should be able to break the law. ...

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No. None of these instances was about them insisting on being entitled to break the law. They are about whether there are, or should be, any limits to an employer's rights to order an employee to go against their own conscience or religion, and to sack them if they don't comply i.e. when at work, does a servant have any title to his or her conscience or is it solely at their master's behest?

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Posted                          

quote:

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Originally posted by Enoch:
They are about whether there are, or should be, any limits to an employer's rights to order an employee to go against their own conscience or religion

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Posted                          

quote:

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Originally posted by Ricardus:

quote:

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Originally posted by Enoch:
They are about whether there are, or should be, any limits to an employer's rights to order an employee to go against their own conscience or religion

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Surely those limits are set out in the employee's contract of employment? An employer, at least in theory, can't oblige an employee to do something that they aren't contractually supposed to do. Conversely, signing a contract of employment where the job description includes X rather implies you have no conscientious objection to X.

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Surely, neither registrars nor counsellors are entitled to discriminate against gays? Nor against black people, or women.

I believe the relevant legislation is known elegantly as Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations.

It outlaws discrimination in the provision of goods, facilities, services, education and public functions on the grounds of sexual orientation.

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Matt Black:
But was her contract amended in that way? Or what it simply the case that she was obliged by the contract to issue licences for marriage which the law change then extended to include CPs?

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Posted                      

quote:

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Originally posted by The Great Gumby:
Which is where Lilian Ladele comes in. In her case, the contract didn't change, but the nature of the work did, as a result of new legislation.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
I'm not sure an individual employee should be allowed to dictate terms like that. For instance, say you were hired as a waitress at a "Whites Only" lunch counter in the late 1950s. A few years later public pressure forces your employer to reverse this policy and racially integrate, allowing all races to be served at your luncheonette. Is the employer obligated open a second, still "Whites Only" counter to accommodate its employees who find integration "morally irksome"? Just allow individual employees to only serve white customers, undercutting the new company policy? From the company's perspective the job hasn't changed (serving food), though some employees would say that it has (serving food to non-whites). I'm not seeing a way that an accommodation could be made in a case like that without drastically undercutting the employer's ability to run his business.

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Posted                      

quote:

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Originally posted by Ricardus:
The thing is the ECHR wasn't asked to rule on whether Ladele had been asked to perform duties that weren't in her job description.

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quote:

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Marvin - in that particular example, assuming a.) the employee's contract specifically states she's only obliged to serve whites, b.) there's no anti-discrimination statute that would rule such a clause unlawful, and c.) the employer wasn't smart enough to add an 'any other duties that might reasonably arise' boilerplate clause into her contract, then yes, she shouldn't be contractually obliged to serve blacks (regardless of the morality of the situation), and if that undermines the owner's business, then that's his fault for drawing up the terms of her contract in that way.

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Posted                          

quote:

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Her job as a registrar was to officiate at marriage ceremonies. That has not changed.

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quote:

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(a) misses the point. No contract back then would have specifically said "whites only", because that was just understood. Similarly, no registrar contract from a few decades ago would say "opposite-sex only", because that was understood.

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Posted                          

quote:

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Originally posted by Ricardus:
Marvin - in that particular example, assuming a.) the employee's contract specifically states she's only obliged to serve whites, b.) there's no anti-discrimination statute that would rule such a clause unlawful, and c.) the employer wasn't smart enough to add an 'any other duties that might reasonably arise' boilerplate clause into her contract, then yes, she shouldn't be contractually obliged to serve blacks (regardless of the morality of the situation), and if that undermines the owner's business, then that's his fault for drawing up the terms of her contract in that way.

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Posted                      

quote:

---

Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Surely, neither registrars nor counsellors are entitled to discriminate against gays? Nor against black people, or women.

I believe the relevant legislation is known elegantly as Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations.

It outlaws discrimination in the provision of goods, facilities, services, education and public functions on the grounds of sexual orientation.

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Odd, isn't it, that Churches are allowed to do exactly that?




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Garden. Room. Walk