Jewish employer, gentile worker
Tonibaruch
I know a gentile person, employed in a small jewish business who always
complains with me cause his jewish boss shuts down the business on
shabbats and holydays forcing her to use her permits and off days. Other
than that it appears that on shabbat she has to work until the business
shuts down, while her jewish female collegues are given permits to stay
home on friday afternoon and prepare for shabbat (apparently they use
those permits to have nice haicuts and have some good gym :-) )
My first answer was: if you don't like the place try to find another.
There's nothing wrong in a jew who helps other jews to have a joyful
shabbat. Maybe they'll help you on xmas. But here in Italy at least
looks like jews aren't working on xtian holydays as well :-)
Anyway, I'd like to know if there is some halachic guidance in dealing
with this kind of situations, being just and not creating a sense of
bitterness in non-jewish workers.
Tb
Steve Goldfarb
Wasn't this a question in the "Dear Prudence" column in Slate last week?
Hm, no, that wasn't it - but I'm sure I saw this precise issue published
somewhere recently...
Anyway, it seems to me that an employer should find ways to accommodate
the employees religious practices (where possible) in a consistent manner,
without applying different standards to different religions.
So for example - if they want to close on Friday afternoons and Saturdays
but be open on Sunday they should be free to do so, but they shouldn't
then require some employees to stay. Alternatively, they could do the
equivalent of what many companies do and implement a "floating holiday"
system - that is, each employee gets some number of "hour credits" that
they can use for time off. The Jewish woman can, if they choose, use those
every Friday afternoon to get off early, while the men and/or gentiles
might save them up and take a few extra vacation days. Or come in late
every Monday.
BTW, don't know what you mean by "permits" - is that a language thing or
an Italian thing?
--s
--
Tonibaruch
> BTW, don't know what you mean by "permits" - is that a language thing or
> an Italian thing?
In Italy, there are national standard contracts between businesses and
workers. Depending from the kind of activity, workers are given an
yearly amount of off days and off hours (the latter usually are grouped
and used as off days, but can if needed used ad less-than-a-day units).
The latter (off hours) are callen in italian "permessi" (permits, I
think, in English).
Usually businesses closes during some periods of the year (christmas and
a couple of weeks in august), so workers are forced to use in those
periods part of their amount of off days. This business, following the
jewish calendar, forces the worker to use jewish holydays plus common
holydays, leaving very little space for personal needs, she says.
Tb
Steve Goldfarb
>In Italy, there are national standard contracts between businesses and
>workers. Depending from the kind of activity, workers are given an
>yearly amount of off days and off hours (the latter usually are grouped
>and used as off days, but can if needed used ad less-than-a-day units).
>The latter (off hours) are callen in italian "permessi" (permits, I
>think, in English).
>Usually businesses closes during some periods of the year (christmas and
>a couple of weeks in august), so workers are forced to use in those
>periods part of their amount of off days. This business, following the
>jewish calendar, forces the worker to use jewish holydays plus common
>holydays, leaving very little space for personal needs, she says.
Interesting. In the US, the way it usually works (esp. for salaried
workers) is that you get some fixed number of days off, where 10-12 of
them are called "holiday" and are chosen by the business, and then you get
an additional 10 - 20 which are called "vacation days" and can be used
whenever you want. Used to be there was another category called "sick
days" which had to be taken for illness or other non-planned-in-advance
events and had to be justified but didn't count against your vacation. Now
it's more typical to just have a fixed number of days of "Paid Time Off" -
PTO - which can be taken for any reason, vacation, religious holiday,
illness, without justification.
So in that model, the company might make Dec. 25th and Dec. 26th holidays
and close the business, then if you wanted Rosh Hashona off you'd have to
take it as PTO time. So yes, someone who celebrated Rosh Hashona would
then have 2 fewer days to go to Disneyland, say, but I don't think there's
anything inherently unfair about that.
--s
--
Tonibaruch
Nothing unfair in fact.
And yes this work nicely in big companies where everybody is able to
model its own vacation plan (altough I always had problems trying to
accomodate my holydays... a big stress...)
If a small company shuts off, taking a number of strange holydays you
don't care about, it is a bit an annoyance. But then again until it is
fair with everybody, ok.
I am a bit pissed about the friday afternoon thing, when semobody is
allowed to go, others don't. Especially if who can't go isn't allowed to
have that time available in another moment.
But, leaving alone the specific situation which is only a starting
point, I am sure jewish laws and customs regulate the thing and I would
be interested in knowing how. It is, I think, a rather delicate issue.
Tb
cycjec
> complains with me cause his jewish boss shuts down the business on
> shabbats and holydays forcing her to use her permits and off days.
I'm not sure what she has to use.
> than that it appears that on shabbat she has to work until the business
> shuts down
That's a halachic issue is it not? I also thought you said
the business was closed then.
> My first answer was: if you don't like the place try to find another.
That's one approach, but being as this involves the laws of Shabbat
there is much to be discussed.
> Anyway, I'd like to know if there is some halachic guidance in dealing
> with this kind of situations, being just and not creating a sense of
> bitterness in non-jewish workers.
There certainly is, and I fervently wish those versed in
it discuss it here.
cycjec
> Depending from the kind of activity, workers are given an
> yearly amount of off days and off hours (the latter usually are grouped
> and used as off days, but can if needed used ad less-than-a-day units).
> The latter (off hours) are callen in italian "permessi" (permits, I
> think, in English).
Oh. Just as in the .us one has a number of days one can
take as vacation days. Not infrequenly, all those days are
used up by Yomim Tovim. Moreover, we often resort to "leave
without pay" when those aren't enough.
> jewish calendar, forces the worker to use jewish holydays plus common
> holydays, leaving very little space for personal needs, she says.
It would make for difficulties.
Tonibaruch
> Tonibaruch <tonib...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> complains with me cause his jewish boss shuts down the business on
>> shabbats and holydays forcing her to use her permits and off days.
>
> I'm not sure what she has to use.
Say that she had a couple of bad experiences and was looking to have a
bit of confort and maybe, if possible, an explanation of things she did
not understand. This is a side issue, but the only relevant on this
group I think.
>> than that it appears that on shabbat she has to work until the business
>> shuts down
>
> That's a halachic issue is it not? I also thought you said
> the business was closed then.
Yes but female workers (if jewish) are allowed to leave even earlier, to
prepare. Which is good I think, but has ramifications.
>> My first answer was: if you don't like the place try to find another.
>
> That's one approach, but being as this involves the laws of Shabbat
> there is much to be discussed.
Yes in fact, it was a starting point to think and talk about general
issues, not the particular case of this lady, which should be known
better and on both sides.
>> Anyway, I'd like to know if there is some halachic guidance in dealing
>> with this kind of situations, being just and not creating a sense of
>> bitterness in non-jewish workers.
>
> There certainly is, and I fervently wish those versed in
> it discuss it here.
Tb
Steve Goldfarb
>Yes but female workers (if jewish) are allowed to leave even earlier, to
>prepare. Which is good I think, but has ramifications.
Thought about it a bit more. Seems to me that if a company had a blanket
rule that Jewish women are dismissed at 3pm on Fridays but all others must
work until 5pm, that would be (in the US anyway) illegal discrimination.
However, employers and employees are free to negotiate any (legal) work
arrangement they like, so if Debbie Cohen negotiates with her boss to let
her go home at 3pm on Friday, that's exactly the same as Dave O'Malley
arranging to leave at 4 pm on Wednesdays for his kid's soccer practice.
People do that sort of thing all the time.
--s
--
fla...@verizon.net
On 11-Dec-2008, Tonibaruch <tonib...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I know a gentile person, employed in a small jewish business who always
> complains with me cause his jewish boss shuts down the business on
> shabbats and holydays forcing her to use her permits and off days. Other
> than that it appears that on shabbat she has to work until the business
> shuts down, while her jewish female collegues are given permits to stay
> home on friday afternoon and prepare for shabbat (apparently they use
> those permits to have nice haicuts and have some good gym :-) )
I am confused - you are saying that she both has to
work on Shabbos *&* has to use her permits to be
off on Shabbos.
Susan
mm
<tonib...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>I know a gentile person, employed in a small jewish business who always
>complains with me cause his jewish boss shuts down the business on
>shabbats and holydays forcing her to use her permits and off days. Other
Did he tell her these were his practices before she took the job? In
the US, unless there is some law I don't know about (and even if there
is, it probaly only applies to large businesses) her failing to ask
would be just about as much her fault as it would be his fault that he
didn't volunteer.
>than that it appears that on shabbat she has to work until the business
>shuts down, while her jewish female collegues are given permits to stay
>home on friday afternoon and prepare for shabbat (apparently they use
>those permits to have nice haicuts and have some good gym :-) )
That seems ok to me. She's gets paid for the hours she's there,
right?
I bought flowers one Friday afternoon, in Haifa, and it took the woman
quite a bit of time to make the arrangement, etc. and it was getting
close to Shabbes (still before 5) and I apologized, and she said it
didn't matter because she was Arab, and she didn't have to be home at
any particular time. Seems fair to me.
>My first answer was: if you don't like the place try to find another.
For sure.
>There's nothing wrong in a jew who helps other jews to have a joyful
>shabbat. Maybe they'll help you on xmas. But here in Italy at least
>looks like jews aren't working on xtian holydays as well :-)
For many years my brother worked on Xmas so the xian doctors wouldn't
have to. He would still do it but, it's not applicable now.
In the US, most big companies close on xmas, and even non-O
self-employed are not likely to see clients or patients. They treat
it like Sunday, another day off from work. But still a lot of Jews
work on xmas, at least when they have a lot of work to do.
One of my friends is forced to take a week of his vacation between
xmas and new years. I woundn't like that. It's cold then. I asked
him if he could into the office anyhow, since there are long periods
of his job where he doesn't have to talk to anyone. He said they turn
the heat off in the whole building, so it's too cold to work. This is
one particular plant of Northrup-Grumman.
>Anyway, I'd like to know if there is some halachic guidance in dealing
>with this kind of situations, being just and not creating a sense of
>bitterness in non-jewish workers.
From halacha you want? I don't know halacha.
>Tb
Don Levey
I see two different issues here:
1) The closing early on Shabbat and holy days. This is what we have
to deal with in the US (in reverse), where businesses are closed on
Christmas, Good Friday, and the like but Jews need to take personal
or vacation time for our holidays. I suspect that in Italy the major
Christian holidays are usually non-working days, forcing Jews to use
personal time for our holidays - so this simply seems like turnaround.
2) Permitting Jewish women to take off even earlier than non-Jews on
Fridays. THat seems to go beyond the "turn-around" equal opportunity.
If the Jews can leave early, so should the non-Jews (and/or be provided
a similar opportunity for an equal number of their holidays).
--
Don Levey, Framingam MA If knowledge is power,
(email address in header works) and power corrupts, then...
NOTE: Don't send mail to to sal...@the-leveys.us
GnuPG public key: http://www.the-leveys.us:6080/keys/don-dsakey.asc
Harry Weiss
> --s
> --
I don't know the details about the Friday afternoons, but here there are
businesses that close the end of December and that is when everyone has to
take off. Schools do not give vacation time other than school closures.
Schools close for the xian holidays. Jews don't get free days off.
I will get December 25th off from work. I would rather work and have Rosh
Hashana or Yom Kippur off instead.
--
Harry J. Weiss
hjw...@panix.com
maxine in ri
When young, I worked for a company run by 7th day Adventists. We all
got off work at noon on Friday.
When I was in tech school, I volunteered for shifts on Christmas and
Easter so at least some of my coworkers would get to spend time with
their families.
Now, it's the busy season at work when the high holidays arrive, but
my boss, and his boss both know that their "no days off til the rush
is over" policy does not affect those days.
maxine in ri
mm
wrote:
>Tonibaruch <tonib...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Depending from the kind of activity, workers are given an
>> yearly amount of off days and off hours (the latter usually are grouped
>> and used as off days, but can if needed used ad less-than-a-day units).
>> The latter (off hours) are callen in italian "permessi" (permits, I
>> think, in English).
>
>Oh. Just as in the .us one has a number of days one can
>take as vacation days. Not infrequenly, all those days are
>used up by Yomim Tovim. Moreover, we often resort to "leave
>without pay" when those aren't enough.
When I first got to Baltimore was the first time I took off holidays
more than Yom Kippur and two days of Rosh haShono.
I had started in May, so I got a full year's worth of vacation days
for only 6 1/2 months.
The following year, I had the same number of days for a whole year,
and I noticed towards the end of the year that I didn't have enough.
I should have said something right away, but around the middle of
January, my immediate supervisor came to me to talk to me about making
up the time somehow. I guess his plan was for me to take fewer
vacation days, but of course there were going to be just as many
Jewish holidays as the previous year.
I told him I wanted to take leave without pay. He said they had no
procedure for that. And this was a computer consulting/contracting
firm. But they had no procedure for that.
I forget what he said. There was barely a hint, but I could see that
he was worried if they docked my pay, it would look like religious
discrimination against me. OTOH, if I let them pay me my full
salary, a) I would consider it dishonest, since when they hired me, I
think I only mentioned RH and YK, b) that would make them less likely
to hire another Jew who took off all the holidays, and maybe any Jew
at all.
I otoh, if anything, considered it discrimination to make me work
extra days or hours to make up for the time I took off for holidays,
but it didn't get to the point where I had to say that.
I couldn't just agree on a lower base pay, at this job or anywhere,
because some years most of the holidays are on weekends, and I
wouldn't want a lower annual pay those years.
Eventually I said, how about I just work for a week and you don't pay
me. At least that put all the days in one week, so maybe that made
it easier for them, and that's what they did. I assured him over and
over that I wouldn't complain later.
Later, the company came out with a policy that we had to give 30 days
notice before taking a day off. The reason for this was only that
employees got paid the same amount each week, but the clients only
paid for the hours we worked, and they wanted to keep the bare minimum
of money in their checking account, so they had to plan 30 days in
advance. I told him that I never took off if software was being
installed, but other than that, I didn't know 30 days in advance.
What should I do, I asked. He said, That's what sick leave is for.
Apparently he was suggesting I lie and say I was sick, to take a day
off which I was perfectly willing to use my annual leave for.
(A real company man, later he let them assign him to Chicago, even
though he had a wife and maybe kids in Baltimore. They let him fly
home every weekend or two, but within a couple years, they were
divorcing. Either the Chicago assignment ruined their marriage, or
the marriage was bad so he took the job in Chicago.)
Eventually I went to work for someone else hourly, because it solved
all those problems. I got paid more per hour but didn't get any
vacation, annual, or sick leave. Much simpler. But in a lot of
fields there is no way to do this.
Ken Bloom
So, in Italy, permits are a pool of vacation days that is mandated by law
(or a standard contract) to be a certain size, and both the employer and
employees draw days from the same pool? If so, then Italian law may make
it very difficult to satisfy this gentile worker. Jews would have a
similar problem, but presumably they complain less because they'd end up
with the same shortage of extra permits if they were allowed to negotiate
more flexible plans.
Is this a correct assessment?
--Ken
--
Chanoch (Ken) Bloom. PhD candidate. Linguistic Cognition Laboratory.
Department of Computer Science. Illinois Institute of Technology.
http://www.iit.edu/~kbloom1/
Tonibaruch
Yes. I'm impressed by your synthesis.
Tb
mos...@mm.huji.ac.il
I remember when my sister looked for work. This goes back almost 50
years. She explained to the company tha she would have to leave early
on Fridays in the winter. They had never heard of something like.
They tpld her they would think about it. In the end, they hired her
but said that one employee leaving ehile all the rest were still
working would be disruptive. So they said she should take off the
whole day Friday, witha comensurate lowering of salary. This was fine
with her and worked out well.
Moshe Schorr
It is a tremendous Mitzvah to always be happy! - Reb Nachman of Breslov
The home and family are the center of Judaism, *not* the synagogue.
May Eliezer Mordichai b. Chaya Sheina Rochel have a refuah shlaimah
btoch sha'ar cholei Yisroel.
Disclaimer: Nothing here necessarily reflects the opinion of Hebrew University
Fattush
IMO the Jewish employer should be more generous to the non Jewish
worker . . . .The non Jewish worker should not be forced to use up his
or her personal holidays. Perhaps on those days when the business is
closed, all employees should just not be paid.
Fattush
> cycjec ha scritto:
>
> > Tonibaruch <tonibar...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> complains with me cause his jewish boss shuts down the business on
> >> shabbats and holydays forcing her to use her permits and off days.
>
> > I'm not sure what she has to use.
>
> Say that she had a couple of bad experiences and was looking to have a
> bit of confort and maybe, if possible, an explanation of things she did
> not understand. This is a side issue, but the only relevant on this
> group I think.
>
> >> than that it appears that on shabbat she has to work until the business
> >> shuts down
>
> > That's a halachic issue is it not? I also thought you said
> > the business was closed then.
>
> Yes but female workers (if jewish) are allowed to leave even earlier, to
> prepare. Which is good I think, but has ramifications.
In the US, that practice would probably be considered discriminatory
unless the Jewish female workers were using up their vacation days.
Why should Jewish female workers be permitted to leave early? In the
US all workers, Jew or Gentile, male or female, should be treated the
same.