Accommodating religious claims in the Dutch workplace
| DOI | 10.1177/1358229113489395 |
| Published date | 01 June 2013 |
| Date | 01 June 2013 |
| Author | Floris Vermeulen,Rabia El Morabet Belhaj |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Accommodating
religious claims in the
Dutch workplace:
Unacknowledged Sabbaths,
objecting marriage
registrars and pressured
faith-based organizations
Floris Vermeulen and Rabia El Morabet Belhaj
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.
Political Science Department, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Corresponding author:
Floris Vermeulen,Political ScienceDepartment, University of Amsterdam,Oudezijds Achterburgwal
237, Amsterdam 1012DL, The Netherlands.
Email: f.f.vermeulen@uva.nl
International Journalof
Discrimination and theLaw
13(2-3) 113–139
ªThe Author(s) 2013
Reprints and permission:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1358229113489395
jdi.sagepub.com
Keywords
Dutch equal treatment commission, faith-based organizations, the Netherlands,
reasonable accommodation, religious civil servants, secularism
Introduction
In what has increasingly become both a religiously diverse and a secular Dutch society,
tensions betweenreligious and non-religious employees andemployers are likely to occur.
On the basis of interviews with leaders in religious,political and public sectors, this article
analyses perceptions of, and possible solutions for, such workplace tensions. We illustrate
how respondentsdiscuss the feasibility of finding solutions andwhat arguments they give.
We inquire whether so-called reasonable accommodations – even-handed solutions for
requests by religious employees to conduct their work in line with their religious beliefs
– are possible and assess respondents’ arguments for why or why not. In cases of the for-
mer, we determineunder which circumstancesaccommodation can occurand how it might
be, on the one hand, relatedto the legal context set by the Act and, onthe other hand, to the
Dutch tradition of dealing with religious diversity.
As mentioned in the introduction of this journal’s special issue, it is important to dis-
tinguish between two clusters of scenarios in which problems and solutions can come
about. The firstcluster concerns the religious interestsof individual employees. Thesemay
come into tension with the rights or interests of other parties (mainly employers, but also
co-workers, clients and the general public) who argue that special treatment violates the
principle of non-discrimination. This is coined the individual religious freedom cluster,
and discussionsamong respondents deal primarilywith employees and employers.As this
article will show,in the Netherlands it is important to distinguish between the cluster’s pri-
vate and public sectors.In the private sector, religious and non-religious respondents tend
to be rather optimisticabout being able to find feasiblesolutions for basic tensionsbetween
religious employees and other parties,so long as the claims are seen to be ‘reasonable’. In
the public sector, however, the situation is different. Here, secular respondents tend to be
more hesitant, if not altogether reluctant, in thinking that demands of religious civil ser-
vants can be accommodated. Doing so, they believe, might jeopardize the Dutch state’s
perceived neutrality and non-religious nature. Hereunder we analyse two cases in which
the Dutch Equal Treatment Commission (Commissie Gelijke Behandeling, hereafter
‘CGB’) explicitly reversed its stance – in opposing directions – about the extent to which
claims of religious civil servants should be accommodated. This illustrates the unsettled
nature of the issue in the Dutch debate.
The second cluster concerns collective autonomy, and thus comprises practices of
majority or minority religious organizations and associations that are protected under col-
lective religious freedoms. This is coined the collective religious freedom cluster.Within
this category,we observe that a tension can existbetween, on the one hand, the autonomous
practices of organizations and associations that are protected by collective religious free-
doms and, on the other hand, principles of non-discrimination on the basis of religion,
gender, sexualorientation, race, ethnicityand nationality. Tensionscan evolve into clashes
and, as will also be shown, this is particularly striking in the Dutch debate. Historically,
114 International Journal of Discrimination and the Law 13(2-3)
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