Insights | February 24, 2020

Hire & Fire employment podcast – religious discrimination

Hire and Fire is back with another season of interesting employment law topics. In this episode, we will discuss discrimination on the basis of religion.

In 2018, the Swedish Labour Court issued a ruling regarding handshakes in the workplace and concluded that by requesting that all employees should shake hands, the employer had discriminated people with a certain religious belief. Despite this judgment, the municipality of Trelleborg recently introduced a policy according to which the municipality’s employees are not allowed to refuse to greet someone with a handshake with reference to culture or religion.

Elin Osbeck and Victoria Bergholz will go through the reasoning of the Swedish Labour Court, did the court really think that the freedom of religion is more important than gender equality? Does the new policy of Trelleborg municipality violate the law? Jenny Welander Wadström will also discuss the outcome of a similar case in Norway.

You can find the episode below and on Spotify or Apple Podcaster.