Posted on 02/24/2015 8:35:45 AM PST by GIdget2004
The people who ran the Abercrombie & Fitch Kids store at a Tulsa mall in 2008 were inclined to hire Samantha Elauf.
The 17-year-old got high marks in her first interview for a sales position on such criteria as appearance and sense of style and outgoing and promotes diversity.
Part of Elaufs appearance, however, was the headscarf she wore because shes a Muslim. The store employees in charge of hiring thought it might conflict with the companys Look Policy so they called the district manager for advice. He told them not to hire her.
The company has been in a fight with the U.S. government ever since.
Its almost over, though. The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments Wednesday and render a decision some time this summer on whether Elauf was a victim of religious discrimination.
This is an extremely important issue that affects many people of different faiths, said Gene Schaerr, a Washington, D.C., attorney representing 15 religious and civil rights organizations that filed a friend-of-the-court brief backing Elauf.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued the clothing chain in federal court in Tulsa and won Elauf was later awarded $20,000 in compensatory damages but the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, ruling that the Abercrombie store didnt discriminate because Elauf never told the company she wore the hijab for religious reasons and would have to wear it at work.
That, the court said, was in keeping with the governments general policy that businesses shouldnt ask job applicants about their religious beliefs.
It falls now to the justices to decide how explicit a job applicant or employee must be in expressing the need for a religious accommodation or just whose responsibility it is.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsok.com ...
Watching the National Governors Conference, I was much taken by a speaker Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas introduced. The speech by Danny Meyer, author of Setting the Table, was striking. Mr. Meyer, a highly successful New York restauranteur, proposes in his book a very interesting theory of management: that it is not the customer, not the community, and least of all is it the stockholder who must come first. No, Meyer says, the employees must come first because that is the only way to generate true hospitality within your organization. He defines hospitality as how the delivery of your service or product makes the customer feel. And that can only come from how the employees feel.Make no mistake, he calls for nothing less than the best training you can give your employees for their positions (and for upward mobility potential). But no matter how well you train and discipline, he says, you wont be anyones favorite restaurant (or whatever) unless the morale of your people is even better than their technical performance. And that, he says, implies that you must hire and retain only people who not only can do their jobs, but who will be hospitable to each other. Your employees are happy, their delivery of their service to the customer will make the customer feel happy. And, in a virtuous circle, that will make the employees feel happy.
To me, the application to politics is obvious. Having the government decide who can be hired means true hospitality, as Meyer defines it, becomes impossible (which should be no surprise; it has been known forever that socialism is the enemy of quality). The government regulation of business inevitably involves blunt instruments and crude measurements - and the evasion of impossible mandates always subverts the incentive to produce quality.
In the present instance, of course you are right - the wearing of an article of clothing which contrasts with the meaning of the organization undercuts everything the organization is trying to do. In this case, the clothing store is selling the way its customers feel about what they buy to wear. It is unreasonable to expect that the kerchif would not interfere with managements objectives. Can you actually have morale when you have employees selling clothes they wouldnt be caught dead wearing?
I’m on your side in this discussion.
I would think so.
Taqiyya indeed.
Why the Sam Hell would anyone ever consider hiring a muslim under any circumstances?
Not hiring a muslim should be good PR.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.