 |
|
| Politics Forum Index » Green Politics Forum » You can't sack me, I'm with Gaia... |
|
Page 1 of 1 |
|
| Author |
Message |
| Eric Gisin... |
 Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 10:50 am |
|
|
|
Guest
|
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/04/green_philosophy_ok/
By Andrew Orlowski . Get more from this author
Posted in Environment, 4th November 2009 12:09 GMT
Sacked employees can play the 'Green Card', and make wrongful dismissal claims against their former
employers on grounds of their belief, a judge has ruled.
Paradoxically, this could also protect non-believers - such as climate skeptics and atheist vicars,
the latter being the norm in the Church of England, which we'll come to in a moment.
So what's happened? Basically, a former employee has had his right to sue the employer affirmed by
an appeals judge, on the grounds that his environmentalist views are a philosophical belief (and
not a political view). No such Tribunal has yet been held, but may now take place.
The case was raised by a "sustainability officer" called Tim Nicholson, who had been made redundant
by the property company Grainger last year. Nicholson argues that under the 'Employment Equality
(Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003', belief in the hypothesis of man-made global warming
constitutes a religious or philosophical belief, and this affords protection from discrimination.
In March, Nicholson won the right to sue from a regional employment tribunal. Grainger appealed
against that decision, and Justice Burton's decision yesterday backs Nicholson, affirming his right
to sue.
The ruling may be significant in the years to come. The number of environmentally-related positions
such as "sustainability" officers and eco advisers has mushroomed in recent years - particularly in
the public sector, where a future government (most likely Conservative) needs to make steep cuts.
Could Nicholson help create a sacred employment class of eco-jobsworths, we wondered?
One silk who declined to be named told us it is likely to increase claims against employers.
"It doesn't make you unsackable, any more than being black, gay, a woman, disabled, or Muslim makes
you unsackable. It just potentially puts him into a class of person given protection from unlawful
less favourable treatment,"
"What it might mean is that a few will play the Green card, when they have been sacked for doing
fuck-all work, and doing what little they have done, badly, will claim that the actual reason for
their sacking is their beliefs."
In his judgement, Justice Burton wrote,
A belief in man-made climate change, and the alleged resulting moral imperatives, is capable, if
genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Religion and Belief
Regulations. The belief must be of a similar cogency or status to a religious belief, the ECHR
jurisprudence is directly material and the limitations on the concept and extent of a philosophical
belief can be derived from that, without the need to place any additional limitation on the nature
or source of the belief.
Nicholson, who is not shy of advertising his beliefs, had provided the following statement:
I have a strongly held philosophical belief about climate change and the environment. I believe
we must urgently cut carbon emissions to avoid catastrophic climate change. It is not merely an
opinion but a philosophical belief which affects how I live my life including my choice of home,
how I travel, what I buy, what I eat and drink, what I do with my waste and my hopes and my fears.
For example, I no longer travel by airplane, I have eco-renovated my home, I try to buy local
produce, I have reduced my consumption of meat, I compost my food waste, I encourage others to
reduce their carbon emissions and I fear very much for the future of the human race, given the
failure to reduce carbon emissions on a global scale.
Nicholson repeated "I fear for the future of the human race" several times again for TV cameras
yesterday.
In his complaint, Nicholson said that Grainger had flown an employee to Dublin to hand him his
missing Blackberry - a crime against Gaia, and an indication that his "beliefs" were not being
respected.
But what, then, constitutes a philosophical belief?
In 2005 the Attorney General of Scotland declared that atheism may constitute a philosophical
belief, but that a belief in the 'the supreme nature of Jedi Knights', for example, may not be.
Which is all very confusing, because you may recall that Jedi believers achieved the status of a
religion in the eyes of UK Census takers in 2001. [more.]
The AG had indicated that politics shouldn't be construed as a philosophy. Nicholson's barristers
took this line of argument too, and attempted to persuade the judge - by quoting from that
historical work of authority, The Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. This is a volunteer project
that, we discovered, lacks entries for Empiricism (or Logical Positivism, or Marx) but does include
an entry for Evolutionary Psychology (sic) and a 10,500 word entry on 'Environmental Ethics'. The
defence cited that.
The Judge agreed, but pointed out that the protection afforded by the 2003 Act cut both ways.
"If the Respondent has his philosophical belief in climate change, and he were to discriminate
against someone else in the workforce who does not have that belief, then the latter would be
capable of arguing that he was being treated less favourably because of his absence of the belief
held by the Respondent."
So it appears that climate skeptics are protected too - paving the way for the first 'Denialist'
climate change official. The 2008 Climate Change Act decrees that every company must designate an
employee as a carbon monitoring officer.
Justice Burton is the judge who decreed that Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth contained nine serious
errors and breached the impartiality guidelines of the 1996 Education Act.
Stuffing 'philosophical beliefs' into employment legislation was a sop to humanists, who fancied
getting on the victim compensation game too. It's now up to Judges to decide when a philosophy
isn't politics - little wonder that the result is farcical - with lots more work for lawyers. ® |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
| Steve Hayes... |
| Posted: Wed Nov 04, 2009 9:44 pm |
|
|
|
Guest
|
On Wed, 4 Nov 2009 07:50:58 -0800, "Eric Gisin" <gisin at (no spam) uniserve.com> wrote:
Quote: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/04/green_philosophy_ok/
By Andrew Orlowski . Get more from this author
Posted in Environment, 4th November 2009 12:09 GMT
Sacked employees can play the 'Green Card', and make wrongful dismissal claims against their former
employers on grounds of their belief, a judge has ruled.
I suppose that's as good a reason as any for immigrating to the USA.
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
|
All times are GMT - 5 Hours
The time now is Sun Dec 06, 2009 9:39 am
|
|