MUSLIM RESTAURANT STAFF WINS OVER $80,000 IN DISCRIMINATION LAWSUIT (1603 hits)
Three Muslim workers at a well-known eatery in a suburb of Toronto, Canada have been awarded around $93,000 in a discrimination case. The men claim they were forced to eat pork, which is prohibited for them to consume due to their religious practices. The Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario made it clear that it thought the allegations were “really shocking”.
The tribunal said that the owners of Le Papillon restaurant "made the workplace intolerable" for three of its Muslim employees, including being forced to eat pork, mocked for speaking Bengali, being verbally abused and threatened with replacement by "white" staff.
A defendant in the case said the restaurant owners asked him to try a pork schnitzel because it was offered on the menu. When he did not try the meat as he explained it was against his religious beliefs, his boss threatened to let him go. The other men faced situations of a similar manner. Even though the restaurant workers had been employed with Le Papillon for many years without any issues, this incident happened to them most recently.
Besides the money that must be paid out to the workers, the owners of the restaurant have to take mandatory human rights training course. In addition they are obligated to post Human Rights Code cards around the entrance of the restaurant’s kitchen. The owners have denied the allegations and are currently appealing the tribunal’s ruling.
