Is denying time off work to attend a music festival discriminatory?

I worked somewhere once where someone claimed to be a pagan and tried to get winter & summer solstice off as additional paid leave as it was her religious holiday 😆

she did not mention it again after meeting our rather terrifying HR officer....

Can't read the article because it needs a subscription but on the headline I'd say she lost her discrimination claim rightly and needs to learn to accept that you can't always have everything you want, sometimes other people will have booked the week you wanted leave for first and that's life.

A woman did this where I worked years ago, it was a Pagan music festival of some sort. Loads of people started saying they were Jedis and demanding May 4th and other days off, it got very very silly and funny and no, she did not get the time off.

No it's not discrimination. The employee has to much time on their hands. It may be spiritual to her but not the employee's problem.

Some employees need time off for hospital , dentist, and this has to be accomadated but a festival does not. However they need to apply the same thing to school plays ect if enough notice is not given otherwise discrimination can be called.

Sarah there making sure no charity would ever now consider employing her

It’s not a protected characteristic so no

Anyone from the Feminism Sex and Gender Discussions board knows the Grainger criteria, and this was an easy claim to dismiss.

They could have offered to work good friday, easter monday, Christmas day and boxing day in lieu

Yes i am aware some of these are not technical religious holidays or however tlthe pedantic people will word it

How did I guess that there would be metal stuck in her face or that the hair would be an un-natural colour?

It's not discriminatory. It's entitlement.

Well as your thread says, her claim was unsuccessful so it’s not considered to have been discrimination, legally.

Although just to note while sometimes there are batshit employment tribunals quite often the press pick up on random ones and completely twist it. You usually have to actually read the full judgement to get a true sense of the case, which can be quite different to the news stories.

No one is guaranteed time off for any religious holiday / festival are they?

Surely organisations still have to operate over key dates?

Oh dear.

I despair. People are literally bonkers. How can anyone be so hard faced as to actually try to claim discrimination for this. She should be really thankful she doesn't actually know what discrimination us. Stupid entitled idiot.

No she wanted to keep those within her holiday allowance as well Because her family weren't pagan so she would need the time to see them

and we didn't open those days anyway

No.

there are religious holidays that are not official days off for everyone in the UK - obvious example Eid for Muslims - but these are usually well known and HR are happy to give the day off.

she’s not a member of a recognised religion and it’s a random music festival

This is the problem with treating religion as a human right that requires equality, as opposed to a human choice, obviously not saying we want discrimination, but it can descend into a slippery slope of silliness. Who’s to say her spiritual belief is any less than a Muslim or Christian…? How do you measure that? The less influence religion has on us all over time, the better.

Ha funny that

This has made me rage.

The charity I worked for was taken to a tribunal over an outrageous case, which was thrown out at tribunal almost immediately. But by that stage it had cost us £18k. Of charitable money. And countless hours of staff time.

I love the Arthouse chocolate and cards, it’s a great charity.

Her spirituality is badly misplaced.

Fucking grifter.

It’s interesting. I got the sense from the article I read that she was generally taking the mickey.

There was a woman on here a couple of years ago that appeared to specialise in getting her family members through tribunals for reasonable adjustments that seemed very unreasonable. She’d coached them through several, requiring massive expenditure by the employer, in one case he left within weeks of them changing all the flooring to suit him. It was bizarre.

The sad thing is if your work allow paid time off for other religious events such as Christmas, hannocur, eid etc then they would lose that case as it would be religious/belief discrimination under the equality act

Whether this person was taking the mick or not, the solution to issues over different religious holidays is for more companies to consider switching to floating bank holidays.

YANBU.
Ive worked with many people of different religious belief and my employer NHS did try to honour peoples needs in regard to religious days ,obviously not always possible i never came across anyone of any religion or belief system that argued it was discrimination if their request for a particular day off wasn't possible.

This predated the equality act - was early 2000s

would be interesting to see if she would get the same response now