Reconciling
the religious precepts of observant Muslims with the secular norms in
the European workplace has long been a sensitive subject. France’s
strict legal separation of religious and civic life — a legacy of the
French Revolution known as laïcité — formally discourages, and in some
situations expressly bans, public religious expression. It is a brand of
secularism that coexists uneasily
with Islamic traditions, making workplace negotiations about religious
practice particularly difficult and prone to misunderstandings.
The issues have become thornier after the latest wave of terrorist activity, including the November attacks in Paris
that left 130 dead. With much of the region on edge, the French
government has set a forceful tone, granting sweeping emergency powers
to the police and stepping up the scrutiny of mosques, Islamic
associations and individuals. The sense of unease is particularly
palpable for companies operating in sensitive areas like transportation,
security and infrastructure.
Adding
to workplace conflicts like the one at Securitas, as well as reports of
tensions at other large employers, is that many Muslims have become
more assertive in fighting stigmatization on the job. But many managers
and union leaders in France report feeling ill equipped to respond to
employee demands for things like dedicated prayer rooms or pork-free
canteens — let alone to detect and combat genuine radicalization at
work.
“Today,
we are in a very complicated situation,” said Philippe Humeau, a
researcher at InAgora, a consultancy that specializes in religion and
the workplace.
While France’s workplace rules around religion are relatively distinct,
the broad concerns are playing out globally, as countries confront the
rise in terrorist activities. . . . “Most
companies don’t know much about Islam,” he said. And in the current
climate, “we are seeing companies confuse strict religious practice,
which is already difficult to accept in France, with radicalization.”
The risk is that companies, in a quest to protect their staff and their clients, unfairly profile certain employees.
The
security company said the beard rules, and the subsequent firings,
adhered to the law. As a private company working on behalf of public
sector clients like the airport, Securitas said it must conform to
France’s strict secularism laws.
“We
are confident,” Michel Mathieu, the head of Securitas’s French
operations, said, in reference to the decision to fire the Orly guards.
The company has not accused the guards of any illegal activities, nor
has it presented any evidence that they engaged in radical behavior on
the job. But he said that recent events had led Securitas to revisit its
approach to all forms of religious practice in the workplace.
What
some might view as overt religious profiling, Mr. Mathieu insisted had
become a necessity for a company like Securitas, whose mission is to
protect against potential dangers that now include Islamic terrorism.
The risks, he added, were no longer abstract. Last year, Securitas
alerted the French authorities to four security agents who, despite a
rigorous vetting process that includes multiple background checks, were
found in possession of jihadist propaganda on the job.
The
principle of laïcité, however, applies only to those who work in
France’s vast public sector economy. For private companies like
Securitas, the situation is murkier. . . . . Some labor union leaders complained that managers, fearful of complaints
from Muslim employees, had long tolerated religious behavior on the job
that was explicitly prohibited by the company’s own policies.
Officially,
France’s vigorous brand of secularism applies to all religious faiths.
But over the last decade, regulations on laïcité (pronounced
lie-EE-see-tay) have tended to focus on Islam. A law prohibiting
government employees and high school students from wearing head scarves
and other “conspicuous” religious attire was introduced in 2004. A
specific prohibition against women wearing full-face veils in public
went into effect in 2011.
Opinion polls show such bans have broad public support — and they have been upheld
recently by Europe’s top human rights court. But they are resented by
many of France’s five million Muslims who see the rules as unfairly
stigmatizing their religion.
Under
French labor law, private employers are required to respect the
religious freedom of their employees, meaning that such companies are
expected to tolerate religion on the job. Only proselytizing and acts of
pressure toward other employees are expressly banned.
The
regulations do, however, allow for a number of exceptions, like
employee health and safety, operational continuity and protecting
commercial interests. . . . In strict practice, the rules mean that an employee who accepts a job at
a butcher shop, for example, could not refuse to handle pork. A train
driver would not be allowed to stop on the tracks to pray. A waitress
could not decline to serve alcohol to customers.
Employers indicate that conflicts over religion in the workplace are on
the rise. A 2015 survey of 1,300 French companies by the Observatory of
Workplace Religious Practice, a research group based at the Institute of
Political Science in Rennes, France, found that 12 percent of human
resources managers had faced disputes over religious practices that were
difficult to resolve, up from 6 percent in 2013. Among the most
difficult situations cited included employees’ rejection of the
company’s authority to set limits on religious behavior as well as
refusals by some men to work alongside women, either as a colleague or a
boss.
