Discrimination Or Necessity?

As much as many employers try to be accommodating to employees when and where they can, there are times when an employer must draw the line, otherwise chaos will ensue.

When it comes to devout Muslims, some customs go against public health laws (certain hospital garbing requirements in the UK violate orthodox Muslim dress codes, possibly putting patients at risk) and no amount of complaining will change the need to follow those laws. In other circumstances it's a company policy, something developed over time for reasons of safety or cleanliness. But that doesn't stop some from claiming discrimination.

A group of Muslim workers claim they were fired by a New Brighton tortilla factory for refusing to wear uniforms rather than their traditional loose-fitting skirts and scarves, according to a civil liberties group.

Gruma Corporation, the Irving, Texas-based parent company of Mission Foods, released a written statement Tuesday denying that any employees were terminated or disciplined at the New Brighton plant. However, the company made clear the six women have been relieved of their responsibilities for the time being, and may ultimately lose their jobs if they don't wear uniforms.

''Should these employees choose to adhere to the current Mission Foods uniform policy, they may return to their positions with the company,'' the company statement said. ''However, these positions will need to be filled as soon as possible and cannot be held indefinitely.''

The company has every right to impose a dress code. However, the company doesn't necessarily hold the moral high ground here as they did allow the women in question to wear coats that allowed them to maintain their modesty, but took them away before changing their dress code.

Since I have no idea what work at the tortilla factory entails, I am making this comment in the blind: Loose clothing in a factory setting can be a killer. Anywhere there's machinery operating, loose clothing endangers the wearer as it can easily be snagged by the machinery and draw the wearer into it, causing injuries or death to them or their co-workers. Machine guarding can only go so far.

If the dress code was changed to reduce the threat of such accidents (and their insurance carrier may have insisted), then they are well within their rights to impose it. If these women were willing to sign a legally binding waiver absolving the company for any liabilities for injuries on the factory floor they might suffer due to their clothing, then the company should let them return. Otherwise why should this firm put themselves in a position for potential liability because of their employees dress? How far should any employer go to accommodate an employee's special needs?

A Picasso Of Asininity

While the conservative blogosphere, as well as some of the more conservative dead tree media, have been pleased to see that lifelong liberal David Mamet has “seen the light”. Writes Jonah Goldberg:

"As a child of the '60s," he recently wrote in a startling and lively essay for the Village Voice, "I accepted as an article of faith that government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people are generally good at heart."

But Mamet has changed his mind. The accretions left from wave after crashing wave of reality made it impossible for him to carry the load of his cognitive dissonance. For years he'd called NPR "National Palestinian Radio." He'd realized that while government may be incompetent, corporations at times myopic, and the military imperfect, seeing politics through the prism of a Thomas Nast cartoon (you know, where industrialists are cast as pigs in tuxedos feeding at the public trough) might not be as wise as, say, The Village Voice believes it is.

"I began reading not only the economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philosopher) but Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson and Shelby Steele ... and found that I agreed with them: a free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism."

However, some of his former political compatriots are aghast at his conversion.

Michael Billington might have a different response. "I am depressed to read that David Mamet has swung to the right," wrote the Guardian's theater critic of more than three decades. "What worries me is the effect on his talent of locking himself into a rigid ideological position."

This response is quite simply perfect, a Picasso of asininity, a Mona Lisa of moronic imbecility.

Excuse me? “Locking himself into a rigid ideological position”? Some of the most rigid, ideologically locked people I have ever come across have been those from the Left. For the most part they have been indoctrinated, some since they were children, and others through their post-high school years. They've been spoon-fed a morally bankrupt and politically corrupt ideology that has, in its many incarnations, killed millions through actions, direct or indirect.

Many of the conservatives I know did not grow up conservative. Instead, they went through an awakening all by themselves, with no coaching or indoctrination from those walking the halls of academia. In many cases they were liberals who were finally mugged by reality, realizing the political ideology they'd been following was a hollow shell, offering feel good platitudes, pseudo-intellectual political dogma, a piss poor understanding of our fellow humans and what motivates them, and little understanding of how the world works. The Left knows how they'd like to believe the world to be, but they don't truly understand what it's really like out there.

Welcome to the fold, Mr. Mamet.