I think it’s fair to say that nothing Rob Grant writes should ever come true.
November 14th, 2009There is a law which states that you can’t discriminate according to religious beliefs. In principle I think this is a bad law, because the idea that someone can’t be refused employment on the basis that they’re delusional is absurd, but pragmatically I think it’s necessary. Relatively few people choose their religious beliefs and people whose parents have inducted them into cults have it bad enough without having a tough time getting a job.
The pragmatic necessity, though, doesn’t extend to any old nonsense. This week, there have been two weird uses of this law. The first was Tim Nicholson, who won a judgement about unfair dismissal after he was sacked for hectoring his company about green issues.
His solicitor, Shah Qureshi, said: “Essentially what the judgment says is that a belief in man-made climate change and the alleged resulting moral imperative is capable of being a philosophical belief and is therefore protected by the 2003 religion or belief regulations.”
This was best summed up, I think, by David Mitchell on the News Quiz, who essentially said that it’s good these ideas get respect but that it’s bad that the way they do so is to be more like religions. He said that arbitrary religious reckonings musn’t be questioned but scientific facts backed by evidence are fair game and that that was the wrong way around.
More recently,
Alan Power, a trainer with Greater Manchester Police, will rely on a previous judgment that found his belief in mediums who contact the dead is akin to a religious or philosophical conviction. In an unpublished judgement in Mr Power’s favour seen by The Independent, the employment specialist Judge Peter Russell said that psychic beliefs are capable of being religious beliefs for the purpose of the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003.
If you need convincing that this is perverse, read this:
Judge Peter Russell… said: “I am satisfied that the claimant’s beliefs that there is life after death and that the dead can be contacted through mediums are worthy of respect in a democratic society”
Really? I would say they’re worthy of mockery, and I’d further say that they’re a very good reason to sack him if
Mr Power told the court that he had a belief in psychics and their “usefulness in police investigations”.
The judge said that a later hearing would have to establish whether Power was ‘dismissed for the possession of religious or philosophical beliefs or for his alleged inappropriate foisting of his beliefs on others’.
But then, according to the Times,
Mr Power, who worked for Greater Manchester Police for three weeks in October last year, was sacked over his work with neighbouring police forces and his “current work in the psychic field”, the tribunal heard.
If Power wins the second hearing then this would effectively shepherdus into the fictional world of Rob Grant’s Incompetence. This is a book set in a dystopian future in which it is illegal to discriminate on the grounds of incompetence, and therefore everyone does the job they want and most of them are terrible at it.
This is part of the wider problem of religion: it demands that we respect ideas that range from slightly odd to downright idiotic, but doesn’t properly define which ones, so any attempt to mandate that respect is doomed. You can’t build an internally consistent set of rules if you have to accommodate the mandatory respect of a handful of strange beliefs. You end up having to respect any belief regardless of its merit and that leads to people being killed by elevators with buttons wired up for floors that don’t exist.
It should be illegal to fire someone because they believe in man-made climate change because that’s sensible. It should be legal to fire someone because they believe in psychic mediums because that’s stupid. Surely we have a law for that? Surely that’s what the ‘unfair dismissal’ means?
[More Help]
November 14th, 2009 at 11:25
“It should be legal to fire someone because they believe in psychic mediums because that’s stupid.”
Er, no. Fairly obviously it shouldn’t be legal to do that. It should be legal to fire someone if they’re bad at their job. If Alan Power was training people to use mediums in investigations, that’s relevant. If he believes it but it didn’t affect how he did his job, his belief doesn’t matter, irrational as it is.
I’d imagine that’s probably what you meant.
November 14th, 2009 at 13:26
Yes, although I don’t think that is “fairly obvious”. Discrimination based on belief is not like discrimination based on gender or race: someone’s beliefs tell you about who they are and how good they are likely to be at a job. They also tell you how rational the person is, how good at judging evidence and, I would say, how stupid they are. All of these are reasonable ways to make staffing decisions.
I agree that if someone holds a belief like this and it doesn’t affect their job then they shouldn’t be fired purely for that, but I think a law protecting them would have to be very carefully designed not to permit this kind of abuse. I don’t even know if it would be possible to craft such a perfect law.
Ultimately, I find myself more sympathetic to someone who wants rid of a delusional employee than someone who demands that their delusion be accommodated rather than reading up on the subject and learning whether they were right or not. I certainly would hate to have to employ anyone with that attitude.
November 14th, 2009 at 14:08
According to a blog,
That I can’t find this mentioned in a newspaper is a worry.
According to The Times,
That sounds very dodgy to me.
November 14th, 2009 at 14:15
There’s a difference between what’s a reasonable way to make staffing decisions and what’s a reasonable basis on which to dismiss someone. When someone already works for you, you should be able to tell how good they are at their job. If you have to guess based on their beliefs then you’re doing it wrong. Moreover, even when you’re hiring you shouldn’t be eliminating people because of what they believe, but because of how good you think they would be at their job.
You said that ‘the idea that someone can’t be refused employment on the basis that they’re delusional is absurd’, but why should simply holding a false belief disqualify someone from emptying bins or delivering letters or plumbing or coaching footballers or ballet dancing or putting out fires?
When you say ‘they generally shouldn’t be fired purely for that’ can you suggest any circumstances in which they should?
November 14th, 2009 at 14:21
It wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn that Alan Power was doing that. If so, it was inappropriate. And it would have been just as inappropriate if he had been encouraging the police to use ‘psychics’ for a lark, or for money, or because his girlfriend asked him to, and he didn’t believe in them himself.
November 14th, 2009 at 15:00
No. The word “generally” was debris from a previous phrasing which I removed in an edit as soon as I noticed it was still there. It was only there for a few seconds.
It’s not about holding false beliefs, it’s about holding unjustifiable ones. Protecting beliefs in this way is absurd because baseless beliefs are a symptom of defective thought processes. But people are absurd and so sometimes an absurd rule is necessary.
November 25th, 2009 at 11:39
Hm. So apparently he was sacked for his “current work in the psychic field” and also for enjoying frisking people a bit too much.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8377512.stm
So his beliefs are recognised as a bad means to discriminate but the implications aren’t properly explored. I vaguely worry about the implications of an ‘indirect discrimination’ case about one of these made-up pseudo-religions. Oh, well, time to edit the Shazanity wiki to say that all followers must take five minute Twitter breaks every half an hour. See what happens then.