Businesses are used to the idea that they are legally required not to discriminate based on religion, gender, race or age, for example, but in the UK at least one new item may be added to the list of things companies could get sued for: discriminating against greens. A much-discussed ruling has given a terminated employee the right to sue his former employer on the basis that he was discriminated against for his environmental views. The decision in effect gave deeply held secular views the same legal status as religious beliefs, according to the Telegraph:
In a landmark ruling, Mr Justice Michael Burton said that “a belief in man-made climate change … is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Religion and Belief Regulations”.
The ruling could open the door for employees to sue their companies for failing to account for their green lifestyles, such as providing recycling facilities or offering low-carbon travel.
While it’s far from obvious that this idea will jump the pond and confront American business, the ruling does raise the question of how much employers should be expected to bend to accommodate a range of personal views and self-expression, as well as spurring debate on if and how secular beliefs should be protected (philosopher Alain de Botton argues for a secular religion for atheists to nurture and protect humanists). Does this open a crazy can of worms of litigation?
As an ever more diverse young generation enters the workforce will corporate culture be less able to (and perhaps inclined to) enforce conformity? (For example, should anyone, excepting the rare special case, care about a couple of tattoos these days?) How much conformity is desirable is a thorny question, but perhaps we should move away from a model in which organizations generally ask people to hide their uniqueness, and instead “privilege the claims of the individual against countervailing interests like ‘neatness” or “workplace harmony’” as Yale Law School professor Kenji Yoshino argues in this thought-provoking NY Times Magazine piece.
(Image from an environmental activist’s nightmares by Cherrylynx, CC 2.0)
