“Human and civil rights must apply to all employees”

“The traditional privileges for religious communities in labor and works constitution law, which go far beyond legitimate protection of tendencies, are still a scandal,” said Frieder Otto Wolf, President of the Humanist Association of Germany (HVD), yesterday about a campaign launched last Wednesday against religious discrimination in working life. The campaign was initiated by the International Confederation of Non-Denominationalists and Atheists and the Giordano Bruno Foundation and aims to enforce the European anti-discrimination directives in social institutions run by religious communities. The spokesperson is the former SPD finance expert Ingrid Matthäus-Maier. The President of the HVD went on to say: “Discrimination against people of faith and non-believers in the workplace, as has been possible up to now on the basis of the current special law for religious communities, cannot be endorsed from a humanist and secular perspective. The fact that events such as remarriages, divorces or homosexual partnerships can lead to the loss of a job in our country is an outrageous and actually even bizarre grievance. Just like the fact that the rights to strike or to form works councils are being withdrawn across the board.” Wolf also referred to the broad social alliance that has formed among the trade unions for this reason and which is demanding central fundamental rights for hundreds of thousands of employees in Germany.[2] The European Court of Human Rights has also recognized the hitherto denied right to strike as a human right with good reason, even for employees in special relationships, the German civil servants, according to Wolf. Politicians and legislators should follow this course. “The losers of the current law so far are all employees who do not follow the particular religious doctrine of established institutions, as is often the case with religious employees themselves. And the strong position of large denominational associations supports these conditions.” A fundamental public debate was therefore overdue and a fundamental change was “urgently needed” to guarantee human and civil rights, Wolf said. “Human and civil rights must apply to all employees. Specific conclusions from individual theologies or religious legal doctrines cannot provide comprehensive standards for the way of life of all employees of companies that are financed by and for the general public within the framework of free sponsorship. Comprehensive restrictions of job offers in the facilities to applicants from one denomination cannot be justified and are illegitimate. The legitimate needs of church sponsors for protection of tendencies in areas that are actually close to preaching can certainly be met without such privileges.”