What do you as an employer do when your business needs an employee to be on duty on Saturday mornings, but she declines on the basis that her religious beliefs prohibit her from working on “the Sabbath”? Whose rights trump whose?
This is dangerous ground. Our laws are particularly hard on employers found guilty of “automatically unfair discrimination”, and amongst the many “arbitrary grounds” of discrimination which could underpin such a finding are “religion”, “conscience” and “belief”.
A recent case in the Labour Appeal Court illustrates both how these laws work in practice, and the dangers of failing to comply with them.
