Swiss court faults firm for firing woman over headscarf

Geneva: A Swiss court has ruled against a company that fired a longtime employee after she began wearing the Muslim headscarf, marking one of the first such rulings in Switzerland, media reported.

A regional court in Bern ruled last month that a Serbian woman was unfairly fired from a dry cleaning business and ordered the company to dish out back pay and damages to her, the Le Matin Dimanche weekly reported yesterday.

The 29-year-old woman, identified only as Abida, was fired in January last year from a job she had held for six years after she began wearing the Muslim headscarf.

Her employer had said the headscarf violated hygiene rules, and told her to remove it or be let go. She reportedly offered to wash her headscarf daily or wear disposable headscarves, but her employer refused.

The court ruled that the company had violated her constitutional right to freedom of expression.

It said wearing a headscarf could only be grounds for termination in cases where it made it impossible to carry out duties described in the employment contract or if it “substantially affects” the working environment.

The case is one of the first of its kind in Switzerland, Le Matin Dimanche said, pointing to only one other known case in 1990, when a machine manufacturer was also faulted for firing a woman for wearing a headscarf. — AFP