Accommodating religious claims in the Dutch workplace

Abstract

This article analyses religious claims in the workplace arising from tensions related to religious diversity in the Netherlands. On the basis of interviews with leaders in the religious, political and public sectors, we look at the perception of such tensions and discuss the feasibility of accommodating them. Our study distinguishes between the individual cluster (private and public sectors) and the collective cluster. In the former our respondents argue that individual religious employees in the private sector are not under pressure; rather, there is strong support for these individuals to act in accordance with their religious beliefs. When it concerns public employment, however, religious civil servants do seem to be under pressure in the Netherlands; secular respondents argue that civil servants are part of the state apparatus and therefore have no right to make direct or indirect distinctions on the basis of their personal beliefs. In the collective cluster, we found that associational freedoms for religious organizations and faith-based organizations have also come under secularist pressure; non-discrimination is often invoked as the supreme principle, trumping associational autonomy. These observations suggest a shift in the Dutch tradition of governing religious diversity and portend its significant impact on the position of religious employees in the Netherlands.

Building a More Inclusive Workplace for Religious Minorities

“…The objective of this paper was to identify those actions, collected in the scientific literature, that can build more inclusive workplaces for religious minorities. In the research, various examples of religion-based discrimination in the workplace against Muslim women who wear Islamic veil were found (Itxaso 2019;Tariq and Syed 2017;Vermeulen and El Morabet Belhaj 2013). This finding supports previous research and the data available (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights 2017) which indicate that Muslim women who wear Islamic veils suffer more discrimination than other sectors of society (Garcia Yeste et al 2020;Ghumman and Ryan 2013;Halrynjo and Jonker 2016), but they also act to overcome this discrimination.…”

“…At the same time, we identified actions and strategies that different organizations and companies are implementing successfully (Miller et al 2017;Vermeulen and El Morabet Belhaj 2013). There are various actions and strategies available for companies and organizations that want to build new management styles, for example, by adding humanism and focusing on the people who constitute their company (Vila Porras and Toro-Jaramillo 2020).…”

“…The first actions that are based on experience and practice that have been successful are the inclusion of chaplains in the organization in the United States, and the application of reasonable accommodation through the Dutch Equal Treatment Commission (CGB), a commission in charge of promoting and monitoring the implementation of equality of treatment laws in The Netherlands (Vermeulen and El Morabet Belhaj 2013). In the first case, Miller et al (2017, p. 1) studied the benefits of including chaplains (i.e., Christian officials that are responsible for the religious needs within an organization) in the workplace, and they find several positive impacts for the organization:…”

“…Thus, reasonable accommodation consists of 'even-handed solutions for requests by religious employees to conduct their work in line with their religious beliefs' (Vermeulen and El Morabet Belhaj 2013, p. 114). One of the examples presented by the authors is that of a Muslim woman who wore an Islamic veil; she presented a complaint to the CGB because she was denied employment at a call center on the grounds that the veil would prevent her from communicating properly via the telephone because of the fabric of the veil (Vermeulen and El Morabet Belhaj 2013). This case was solved satisfactorily for all parties with an 'out of the box' solution presented by a member of the CGB who suggested placing the telephone headset under the veil (Vermeulen and El Morabet Belhaj 2013).…”

“…One of the examples presented by the authors is that of a Muslim woman who wore an Islamic veil; she presented a complaint to the CGB because she was denied employment at a call center on the grounds that the veil would prevent her from communicating properly via the telephone because of the fabric of the veil (Vermeulen and El Morabet Belhaj 2013). This case was solved satisfactorily for all parties with an 'out of the box' solution presented by a member of the CGB who suggested placing the telephone headset under the veil (Vermeulen and El Morabet Belhaj 2013). The second type of action that we mentioned before are proposals and recommendations suggested in the different studies that we selected in our sample following the systematic review process.…”