[next_xibalba]

"...if a worker's religious belief prohibits handling of pork, they would be exempt from being assigned to food warming and won't be discriminated against."

Perhaps they just shouldn't be working at a restaurant that serves pork? What a ridiculous idea. I'm going to found a religion in which the main belief is that I should not be required to type on a keyboard. As someone working in tech who uses a keyboard non-stop, this is not my problem. Rather, my employer should be obligated to offload that work onto others and only assign me work that does not require the use of a keyboard.

[runarberg]

Supposing a religion that doesn’t exist as a counter example to a religion that does, is a bad faith argument which shouldn’t really be answered. But I’m enjoying this so I’ll answer it anyway.

First of all, there are plenty of developer that don’t use keyboards. Perhaps they have some eccentric tools which they believe are superior, but more realistically they have a disability or injury and can’t use keyboard. Usually they have other tools at their disposal and are able to do their work just fine. It is in fact illegal to discriminate against them on those grounds in most jurisdictions, and employers are able to accommodate just fine. I’m sure your fictional religion will do just fine as well.

Secondly, if you’ve worked in the service industry, or even manual labor, you should know that situations arise all the time where a worker is unable to perform a task. Reasons range from religion and ideology, but also disability injury, sensory issues, neurodiversity, and even just a lack of skill and confidence. What usually happens is that workers are nice to each other and accommodate the worker’s inability, usually by rotating tasks among them selves. In many cases their bosses don’t even know about this, but more commonly their immediate manager knows this and hands out tasks according to their worker’s abilities.

Now this is ripe for abuse. So codifying this in a labor contract makes perfect sense. While this is just unofficial a bad manager could force a worker to perform a task they are unable or unwilling to do, effectively forcing them to either suffer or quit. Codifying this in the union contract is a protection against this kind of abuse.

[MapsSlaps]

Come on. There are billions of people worldwide who have religious prohibitions from pork. This is not a niche population.

Can we really not take a quick moment to say, "Maybe we can help our Muslim and Jewish friends feel more comfortable"? Your solution is really, "No Muslims or Jews in restaurants" rather than "Hey, if needed, we can just ask Kevin to toss the bacon in the oven."

[next_xibalba]

> There are billions of people worldwide who have religious prohibitions from pork.

That's hardly the point. The majority of Starbucks locations are in countries with tiny or non-existent Jewish/Muslim populations: U.S., China, Japan, Canada, etc. [1] In the United States, for example, only 3.5% of Americans are Jewish or Muslim. [2] Wanna bet that figure is far smaller in China?

What's more, this isn't a situation in which there are no alternatives. A person who doesn't want to handle pork has plenty of other employment options.

> "No Muslims or Jews in restaurants"

Seriously? I suggest that people who don't want to handle pork shouldn't apply for jobs where they'll handle pork, and you paraphrase me as "Ban Jews and Muslims from restaurants"???

Let me put it this way: do you think someone who doesn't want to handle pork should be accommodated at a pork processing plant?

[1] https://www.mappr.co/worlds-best-starbucks/

[2] https://www.usreligioncensus.org/node/1641