Church weak in flexi fight

Ian Boyne, Contributor

The Church can flex its muscles all it like, it is going to lose its battle with the State on this flexi-week issue. Indeed, if the Church pushes too much on this issue, it is likely to incur increased criticism and cynicism, resulting in its further marginalisation.

The Church, in a release two Thursdays ago, said the Government's proposal for a flexi-week law represents "a major cultural shift". What is a fact is that there is a major cultural shift against the Church in Jamaica and that it has lost much of the power and authority it once commanded. The Church has been losing too many battles. After years of stoutly opposing gambling and intimidating successive governments, the Church had to sit by and watch the casino law pass into law.

After its stout and stormy protest over carnival march on a Sunday, the Church had to cease and settle and allow the revellers to bacchanal. After strenuously opposing Sunday racing at Caymanas Park, the Church has had to tek weh itself and accept it. There is no major issue I can recall that the Church has taken on and won in the last number of years. The Church is now seen as a paper tiger, its doctrines and practices more ridiculed than revered, its voice now jeered and jarring.

On the flexi-week issue, the Church's opposition seems backward, antiquated and anti-progress. It is more likely to annoy people than to arouse them to defend the Church's position.

Among the middle and upper classes, who privilege money and economic advancement, opposing the ability of firms, especially foreign investors, to have seven-day work shifts without burdensome weekend overtime payments is just nonsense. At a time when Jamaica needs to attract more foreign direct investments and when labour-market reform is the new mantra, for Jamaica to be insisting on two sacrosanct rest days is to be driving away money and jobs. And that is sacrilegious in our secular, capitalist society.

If the International Monetary Fund (IMF) wants flexitime legislation, that is what the IMF will get. So among our secularised elites, there is no sympathy, but scorn, for any resistance to what seems like an eminently sensible and overdue flexitime legislation. Among working-class people, many are saying the parsons are just concerned about their offering plates on a Sunday, and fearful that they might not be hauling in as much tithes and offerings.

The trade unions, which would be expected to protect traditional gains of workers, have become emasculated in this neo-liberal era and are just as marginalised as the Church. They have to fall in line with the neo-liberal agenda like everyone else. The flexi law, when passed, will mean that Sunday will no longer have any special status in law.

What the Government has introduced in its bill in Parliament on Tuesday is a backtracking on an agreement reached in 2003 at the Conference on Flexible Working Arrangements held between the Church, trade unions, Government and employers, in collaboration with the International Labour Organisation (ILO). There were two clear agreements that are not reflected in the bill:

"All workers should … have the right to negotiate the day on which they will take their weekly rest … and that right shall be protected by law."

"The Government will guarantee that the right of all Jamaican citizens to worship is safeguarded by law … ."

WILL CHANGE
LITTLE

But the fact is, this flexi-week law will
change very little about weekend life. There won't be any flood of
investors rushing to open businesses on Sunday. Plus, where were these
churches all these years when their fellow Christians who keep Saturday
were losing their jobs routinely and being persecuted and oppressed by
uncaring employers? While the Seventh-day Adventists are part of this
Umbrella Group of Churches, they have no more to lose with this law
being passed than they are losing right now.

For many
decades, their fellow Christians who worship on Sunday turned a blind
eye to their victimisation. I am not saying to these Sunday-keeping
churches, it serves you right. My point is that if the concern is about
the right of religious believers - including religious minorities like
Sabbath keepers - to have their day of worship, this advocacy should
have been strident and militant decades ago and not merely be
self-serving. They might say this flexi law represents further erosion.
That's why it was important to lobby against the blatant discrimination
against Sabbath keepers over decades.

As religious
people, we must admit that asking a secular society to accommodate our
religious peculiarities can be burdensome. What if an employer has
one-third of his workforce which is Muslim and wants Friday off, another
third which is Sabbatarian and wants Saturday off, and another third
wants Sunday off? Should he be obligated to "respect the conscience" of
those believers by law? Or are we saying that in a democracy, he should
just accept majoritarian Sunday practice? But the essence of democracy,
many have forgotten, is to protect the rights of the minority against
abuse by the tyranny of the majority.

What is needed
primarily is for us to build a culture of tolerance and respect: that
would extend to gays, religious minorities, contrarians, and political
dissidents. If we had a culture of tolerance and respect for people's
democratic right to their beliefs - even their 'illusions' as my atheist
friends would say - we would cheerfully facilitate people's religious
preferences. In Jamaica, our largest denomination is the Seventh-day
Adventist Church, with reputable educational and health institutions and
a strong record of social service.

Yet great efforts
had to be made to exempt Adventists from exams on Saturdays at one
university. No democracy-respecting university - of all places - should
think of setting exams here on a day when so many go to church. A
culture that is tolerant and respectful of democratic culture would not
have a university holding exams on a Saturday and requiring people to
get ministers to beg time off for them. There are public institutions
that have absolutely no respect for religious diversity and people's
constitutional right to exercise their faith. Thank God we have stopped
allowing schools to bar Rastafarian students with
dreadlocks.

LAW ITSELF NOT THE
PROBLEM

I gather that even the legal profession, from
which one should expect some deference to human rights and justice,
holds classes for professional recertification on Saturdays, with no
provision for those who have religious obligations on that day. Shame on
the legal profession! The flexi law itself isn't the problem. The
problem is our insensitivity to ideological and religious diversity. In
the United States, employers have been successfully sued for dismissing
people for not working on a Saturday. In Jamaica, people are routinely
discriminated against because of their Saturday worship and some
employers are brazen even in interviews to tell people they are not
employing them because they are Sabbath keepers. They would be sued in
the US for that, but in this intolerant society, people can get away
with that. And Jamaicans for Justice and the Jamaica Civil Society
Coalition have absolutely no interest in these "petty, sectarian
issues".

The Umbrella Group of Churches says in its
release: "No worker is to suffer any form of discrimination
because of the exercise by the worker of a right to utilise his rest day
as a day of worship." I put it to them that that right is
being violated routinely right now (against Sabbath keepers) without any
flexi law legislation.

Ian Boyne is a veteran
journalist. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and
ianboyne1@yahoo.com.