Employer-mandated participation in self-help meetings with strong pseudo-science and religious undertones My employer has started a 7-week series of classes, to which all employees currently on the clock are expected to attend. We are paid for the time the same as if we had been working. The self-help classes are by a "Foot Zone" therapist, and so far have involved both pseudo-science and religious undertones and terminology specific to the LDS ("Mormon") faith. The subject matter falls far, far outside the scope of work at our small software company. (Here's an article about the speaker, Julie Cheney) Both the CEO and our one HR employee (small company, about 40 employees) are fully in support of these classes. These two people backing these classes means that even if it's not technically mandatory, there's certainly pressure for employees to attend or to at least not complain openly about it. Everyone in attendance was under the impression that it was mandatory, though at the end there was an unclear comment by the CEO indicating that it might not be truly mandatory. I plan to have a 1-on-1 talk with my manager to bring up the problems I have with this series of courses. I expect he will then bring it up with upper management and/or HR. I have plenty of good points and I already know that this manager disliked the class fairly strongly. In the US, and in Utah, are there any laws prohibiting or proscribing this sort of thing by an employer? Does it matter if they are mandatory, as opposed to strongly encouraged but technically not mandatory? UPDATE: As of Friday, Jan 8th, it's officially mandatory. Good grief.
(For a definitive answer, consult an employment attorney). According to the federal Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, in general, An employee cannot be forced to participate (or not participate) in a religious activity as a condition of employment. This requirement comes from Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Answer 14 on this page elaborates: Some private employers choose to express their own religious beliefs or practices in the workplace, and they are entitled to do so. However, if an employer holds religious services or programs or includes prayer in business meetings, Title VII requires that the employer accommodate an employee who asks to be excused for religious reasons, absent a showing of undue hardship. Similarly, an employer is required to excuse an employee from compulsory personal or professional development training that conflicts with the employee’s sincerely held religious beliefs or practices, unless doing so would pose an undue hardship. It would be an undue hardship to excuse an employee from training, for example, where the training provides information on how to perform the job, or how to comply with equal employment opportunity obligations, or on other workplace policies, procedures, or legal requirements. So the questions would be: Is the activity in question a &quot;religious service or program&quot;? This might be ambiguous, and you might have to consult an employment attorney for a more informed opinion. Does it &quot;conflict with your sincerely held religious beliefs or practices&quot;? Would it be an &quot;undue hardship&quot; for the employer to excuse you? Note that this law might not apply to employers with fewer than 15 employees. It also doesn't apply if you work for an employer such as a church, or a religiously affiliated hospital or educational institution, or the like.
This is from a Canadian point of view, but the rules regarding how corporations run is generally pretty standard. I took a few classes in corporate governance, but I'm working mostly from memory, so hopefully most of the information is accurate! A corporation is its own entity, separate from any shareholders, and it can make whatever policies it wants. Unless you are an officer or on the board of directors, your participation in the company usually will be limited to voting in shareholders' meetings and receiving dividends. Refusal of service is a policy matter, so the fact that you are a shareholder (or anyone else, for that matter!) should be irrelevant. In fact, you might be denied service because you're an officer due to conflicts of interest. If the company was unincorporated, you may have more rights, but you'd probably be subject to some sort of agreement.
It is. Part 2 Chapter 1 Section 8 specifically says &quot;People who are not married or civil partners do not have this characteristic.&quot; In practical terms, a claim for unlawful dismissal would not have to rely on this Act or this Characteristic. Many company handbooks refer to avoiding discrimination on &quot;marital status&quot;, so the claim could be made that the company had acted against policy. Not as strong as national law, but likely to succeed in absence of other factors. Single people who were expected to cover shifts that people with a family consistently avoided could argue constructive dismissal on &quot;making unreasonable changes to working patterns or place of work without agreement&quot; grounds. And cases of sexual harassment are as likely to refer to Sections 11 or 12 of the Act as to Section 8. There appears to be some interest in this - north of the border if not in England and Wales - and perhaps less jurisdictionally in Bella De Paulo's article for Psychology Today, which concludes &quot;All serious forms of prejudice and discrimination go through a similar process of going unrecognized, then getting dismissed and belittled once people start pointing them out, and in the best cases, eventually getting taken seriously. Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted that when she was first appointed to the Supreme Court, the other judges did not think gender discrimination existed. ...&quot;
The state has wide discretion on what to require that a school teach to children, particularly in the K-12 grade range. There is little case law where a parent or private school has challenged such requirements. However, for a state to forbid that certain things be taught would probably run into a first amendment problem, because the school has free speech rights. In addition, if the school is a religious one, forbidding teaching its dogmas and views might also impact the free exercise clause. Note that a state need not permit homeschooling at all, and some states do not. When a state requires that a school teach something that it disagrees with, it can often follow a line such as &quot;Many people think X {Standard state supported concept} but we believe Y instead. Then it has taught X, but not endorsed it. Some religious schools have handles the teaching of evolution in this sort of way. If a state mandated teaching matters of opinion as fact, such as &quot;CARTER WAS THE MOST HANDSOME president EVER&quot; there might well be a challenge, and I am not at all sure how it would be resolved.
how does hiring only women comply with our Civil Rights Act (which outlaws discrimination based on sex)? It is compliant. The Civil Rights Act includes an exception where the discrimination or limitation based on sex (or any other protected category) "is a bona fide occupational qualification for employment". That exception is located at the end of 42 USC 2000e-3(b). Although literally referring to employer's publishing of that preference, the very existence of that statutory exception implies a permission to discriminate [for certain occupations] on the basis of sex. At the outset, it would be unreasonable to allow the employer to explicitly state his criteria for hiring and yet be prohibited to implement them. But a more important reason for that exception is the premise of bona fide occupational qualification. That premise indicates that the legitimate purpose of the employment at issue takes priority over the general intent of the Civil Rights Act. The actual &amp; occupational purpose of cheerleading in the NFL context is not to shake pom poms and do choreography on field grass, but to amuse men, who comprise the vast majority of the customer base in the football business. Accordingly, the issue is not whether males are fit or unable to cheerlead, but that male cheerleaders simply would not amuse the average football fan. The occupational purpose would be frustrated if females were replaced with males. The legislative intent of the Civil Rights Act is to preclude discrimination for employment where the protected category (be it sex, religion, etc.) is irrelevant to the actual fulfillment of the occupational purpose.
BC employers are required to give workers three days of unpaid personal illness &amp; injury leave per calendar year. However, this protection only applies to workers who have held a job for more than 90 days. If you have not held the job for that long, it does not appear that any protections apply to you. Note that (as of March 2021) there are separate rules concerning COVID-19 exposure &amp; illness. There may also be protections that apply to you if you are a union member, or if you work in a federally regulated job (banks, national trucking companies, airlines, and some others.)
Financial institutions in the US are subject to regulations that restrict what sorts of things non-licensed employees can talk about with clients and advice they can give about structuring accounts and payments in ways that might avoid triggering money laundering alarms. I think this employee was being cautious about getting into a gray area and phrased the reason they couldn't talk about it poorly. The reason they were restricted from giving you an answer could be a legality, but not necessarily because they are giving you legal advice.
I virtually never see "without prejudice" used in anything but court documents, unless the writer does not know what he's saying. A typical example would be when a person sues someone, but brings the case in the wrong court. The judge would dismiss the case without prejudice, meaning that the plaintiff could refile somewhere else. In contrast, if the person filed in the correct court, but the judge ruled that the plaintiff had done nothing wrong, the judge would then dismiss the case with prejudice. I believe I have on some occasions seen the phrase used in legal correspondence, perhaps noting, for example, that a party was willing to settle his sexual harassment claim for X amount of money without prejudice to their claims for some unrelated issue. In either event, "without prejudice" is typically referring to the ongoing ability to litigate a claim. I'm not entirely clear on how you're envisioning it being used as e-mail boilerplate, but I can't see any reason to do so. If you did, that would not have any effect on the e-mail's admissibility. EDIT: One other note, because I hadn't looked at it before. The LinkedIn article to which you linked and the comments on it are basically nonsense. Legal advice from a graduate of the "School of Life" is about as valuable as life advice from a graduate of a school of law.