Train conductor sacked for referring to ‘alcohol-free caliphate’ on Facebook

[seagull]

If only he'd used the words "Christian Bible Camp" instead of Muslim Caliphate, he'd still have a job.

 

[Wolfie]

Nae danger

Mind you, draft judgements are normally circulated to parties for factual accuracy etc checks before being handed down. WMT could have presumably questioned the text. Deleting the location and role wouldn't have actually changed anything.

 

[H24]

His comments are aligned with the sort of comments made by right wing extremists such as EDL and BNP. Not surprised at all that he has been sacked and it will no doubt be upheld in court.

Hopefully, this will be a good deterrent for hidden far right extremists who may be lurking within British rail companies.

 

[Muse29]

The comment is as moronic as it is ignorant - anyone thinking there's nothing wrong with it should ask themselves why on earth would he mention anything to do with muslamic culture when talking about pubs reopening? Rhetorical question of course, the answer is obvious.

Sacking him seems a little strong mind you if he's done nothing to bring his employer in to it... As stupid as the comment was.

 

[Northern_guard]

His comments are aligned with the sort of comments made by right wing extremists such as EDL and BNP. Not surprised at all that he has been sacked and it will no doubt be upheld in court.

Hopefully, this will be a good deterrent for hidden far right extremists who may be lurking within British rail companies.

What an odd comment.

 

[SRH]

Regardless if you agree or disagree with his statement. We all know the current divisive and **cancel culture** world we currently live in.

The risk of making any sort of comment on social media that can be taken in any sort of offensive terms far outweighs the reward.

Never want to see anybody lose there jobs but once he added muslim into his point he left himself open to this outcome.

At best it was an extremely poor choice of statement.

The comment is as moronic as it is ignorant - anyone thinking there's nothing wrong with it should ask themselves why on earth would he mention anything to do with muslamic culture when talking about pubs reopening? Rhetorical question of course, the answer is obvious.

Sacking him seems a little strong mind you if he's done nothing to bring his employer in to it... As stupid as the comment was.

 

[Need2]

His comments are aligned with the sort of comments made by right wing extremists such as EDL and BNP. Not surprised at all that he has been sacked and it will no doubt be upheld in court.

Hopefully, this will be a good deterrent for hidden far right extremists who may be lurking within British rail companies.

Absolutely ridiculous statement.

 

[AlterEgo]

His comments are aligned with the sort of comments made by right wing extremists such as EDL and BNP. Not surprised at all that he has been sacked and it will no doubt be upheld in court.

Hopefully, this will be a good deterrent for hidden far right extremists who may be lurking within British rail companies.

You might want to check out his Twitter account for more clues as to where on the political spectrum he might lie.

Nonetheless, his comments were at the very least *unwise*, although I agree with people who said if he'd compared an alcohol free totalitarian jurisdiction to the Methodist Church or something similar he'd still have a job.

I think it would be interesting to know the general relationship between Mr Sleath and his employer before this incident.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I think it would be interesting to know the general relationship between Mr Sleath and his employer before this incident.

That was my thought. While I don't know anything about the background of this case so speaking generally, it's not at all unusual for employers to "lie in wait" for something to "get" a particular individual on if they have been a nuisance in the past but not broken any rules.

The main problem may be that it seems to suggest above that it was made on a Union page or group so work was brought into it.

 

[185]

As abhorrent as his views may or may not be - on principle he should have a right to post any comment or political view within UK law.

> If it was illegal, the police by now would have dealt with it as a crime.

He's not a politician, judge or police officer. Will binmen be next?

The tribunal judge (Battisby) seems to put emphasis on the addition of #RMTLEAMINGTONBRANCH at the end of the post which he seems to infer identifies him as an employee of a specific company - this makes no sense, he could be a taxi driver, track worker (or work on a large merchant navy ship from the Port of Leamington Spa).

Further, now should be the time where employers are prosecuted by the ICO or the unions for accessing employee's personal & private online life, including this site, for the purposes of "investigating something that might be there" - aka "an unlawful fishing expedition" as the yanks call it. The recent plague of social media policies are often verbal or unwritten (ie zero status in law) parts of employment contracts and how companies enforce these should quite rightly face very close scrutiny for compliance with GDPR - at what point is there a reasonable expectation of privacy?

This isn't China, is it?

 

[Wolfie]

As abhorrent as his views may or may not be - on principle he should have a right to post any comment or political view within UK law.

> If it was illegal, the police by now would have dealt with it as a crime.

He's not a politician, judge or police officer. Will binmen be next?

The tribunal judge (Battisby) seems to put emphasis on the addition of #RMTLEAMINGTONBRANCH at the end of the post which he seems to infer identifies him as an employee - this makes no sense, he could be a taxi driver, track worker (or work on a large merchant navy ship from the Port of Leamington Spa).

Further, now should be the time where employers are prosecuted by the ICO or the unions for accessing employee's personal & private online life, including this site, for the purposes of "investigating something that might be there" - aka "an unlawful fishing expedition" as the yanks call it. The recent plague of social media policies are often verbal or unwritten (ie zero status in law) parts of employment contracts and how companies enforce these should quite rightly face very close scrutiny for compliance with GDPR - at what point is there a reasonable expectation of privacy?

This isn't China, is it?

Your suggested approach is directly contrary to established case law at Employment Tribunals. I am unclear to what extent cases may have gone higher up the Court structure but if they have it is probable that to implement what you want (which to be clear l don't accept) there would need to be new primary legislation. I seriously doubt that there is any appetite among politicians for that.

 

[GlitterUnicorn]

I googled his name to find the case and by accident stumbled into his social media. I didn't look very deeply but the little I saw had a few islamophobic posts.

The social media post that led to him losing his job was pretty unwise. Talk of protecting "our way of life" from a stereotyped authoritarian "Muslim Caliphate" is the kind of thing that far-right people say, and if he worked for me or with me then I'd be concerned too.

I wouldn't have thought that what he said alone would be enough to lead to a dismissal. But, the judgement does mention the need to examine what happened at the dismissal meetings. I think this might be where the answer to this lies.

 

[Efini92]

Why didn’t he just say he was hacked? Isn’t that the standard defence after posting something that offends people?

On a serious note though, it was a pretty daft thing to say given the way the world treats social media now. The internet is the greatest and worse invention at the same time.

 

[michael74]

In a past life (*BI) I was a telecoms engineer and their was a saying that went along the lines of "don't say down the telephone what you wouldn't shout across the marketplace"....

* Before Internet....

 

[BrokenSam]

In a past life (*BI) I was a telecoms engineer and their was a saying that went along the lines of "don't say down the telephone what you wouldn't shout across the marketplace"....

* Before Internet....

It's sound advice.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It's sound advice.

Particularly on old style cordless phones - I could listen in to my parents' 1990s one on my personal radio.

 

[Watershed]

I googled his name to find the case and by accident stumbled into his social media. I didn't look very deeply but the little I saw had a few islamophobic posts.

The social media post that led to him losing his job was pretty unwise. Talk of protecting "our way of life" from a stereotyped authoritarian "Muslim Caliphate" is the kind of thing that far-right people say, and if he worked for me or with me then I'd be concerned too.

I wouldn't have thought that what he said alone would be enough to lead to a dismissal. But, the judgement does mention the need to examine what happened at the dismissal meetings. I think this might be where the answer to this lies.

Unwise, certainly. But it's well worth considering what would have happened if the tables had been turned, so to speak. Somehow I doubt that WMT would have wanted the press that might have brought.

Unfortunately, even once you have 2 years' service, the protections against unfair dismissal are pretty weak in this country. The decision to dismiss only needs to be within a 'reasonable range of responses' to be lawful - that gives employers an awful lot of latitude.

It's only once you get to protected characteristics, working rights etc. where protections really kick in. Which is why the preliminary hearing went into quite some depth over whether the ex-conductor had legitimate religious/faith beliefs.

Personally, I'd rather that WMT concentrated on addressing their traincrew shortage before they fire perfectly competent employees...

 

[35B]

Every TOC will have a social media policy of some description. Depends what exactly is in it but as @deltic says it will be something about bringing the employer into "disrepute". That blog is a bit all over the place with the author somehow explaining that the complaint of the post is "unlikely to have been made by an evangelical Methodist" and apparently this views are "expressing a perfectly reasonable (and entirely accurate) view about in [sic] Islamic caliphate"

That being said I'm sure he has a case of some sort, and stronger than some I've heard of.

With my moderator cap on, can I please ask that people keep this conversation civil and respect people's beliefs.

"Archbishop Cranmer" takes a robust and right wing line on both free speech and Islam; I also found his blog at best confused. Specifically, he overlooks the rather gratuitous reference to Islam, and the impact that can have. Like you, I suspect he has a reasonable case for the tribunal; I also consider the response to a fairly crass comment disproportionate.

I've also had a quick look at the blog linked to in the opening post, which is worded in a way that rings alarm bells to me. I note from other sources that the blogger is known to express far-right views.

Perhaps also defined as traditional views of the Church of England!!

There are many in the CofE who would differ markedly from him on aspects of his views, which can be fairly "far right" at times. It's also worth note that his views are too broad to be contained within any particular box - some of his posts, especially around Lent and Advent, are of a kind that would normally get dismissed by the "far right".

 

[Bletchleyite]

"Archbishop Cranmer" takes a robust and right wing line on both free speech and Islam; I also found his blog at best confused. Specifically, he overlooks the rather gratuitous reference to Islam, and the impact that can have. Like you, I suspect he has a reasonable case for the tribunal; I also consider the response to a fairly crass comment disproportionate.

Yes, I'd agree it is crass (and entirely irrelevant to the reasons why alcohol was not served on trains for a while) but also that sacking is not justified, unless the opinion was expressed during the actual course of duties (e.g. to a passenger on board the train he was working), as no personal political opinions should be being expressed in that context beyond something small like a union tie or pin.

 

[Horizon22]

Yes, I'd agree it is crass (and entirely irrelevant to the reasons why alcohol was not served on trains for a while) but also that sacking is not justified, unless the opinion was expressed during the actual course of duties (e.g. to a passenger on board the train he was working), as no personal political opinions should be being expressed in that context beyond something small like a union tie or pin.

Or of course if he was on some sort of "final warning" having made previous comments of a similar tone before. As with most cases of this nature, we are not privy to any potential background information that may have influenced this outcome.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Or of course if he was on some sort of "final warning" having made previous comments of a similar tone before. As with most cases of this nature, we are not privy to any potential background information that may have influenced this outcome.

I don't believe comments of that nature (an opinion which is by no means rare) made in a personal context are justifying of any form of employment sanction however much I might think they are crass and irrelevant to the context. One's own political opinions are one's own and others don't have to like them. A dislike of the political position of Islam with regard to the sale and consumption of alcohol is a totally valid opinion, and some of the more politicised Islamic views do support a caliphate including Western countries and the application of Sharia law, and there's nothing wrong with opposing that, no more than I oppose, for instance, the BNP.

On the other hand the hashtag mentioning the Union is a potential issue as it's bringing work into it.

I do get the feeling that they may have been looking for something to get him on from previous conduct perhaps of a different kind.

 

[Horizon22]

I don't believe comments of that nature (an opinion which is by no means rare) made in a personal context are justifying of any form of employment sanction however much I might think they are crass and irrelevant to the context. One's own political opinions are one's own and others don't have to like them. A dislike of the political position of Islam with regard to the sale and consumption of alcohol is a totally valid opinion.

On the other hand the hashtag mentioning the Union is a potential issue as it's bringing work into it.

But anti-Islamic statements would not be acceptable. He's treading the line here closely and perhaps in the past he's been on the wrong side of it. As I said upthread, if its dismissal solely on these grounds, I think he does have a fairly strong case even if I don't at all find his opinions valid.

 

[Bletchleyite]

But anti-Islamic statements would not be acceptable.

Why not, when they concern a political aspect of Islam? It's not really any different to the fact that I oppose the BNP, which is also a political opinion. A desire for a caliphate with Sharia law applicable (including a ban on alcohol) is a political opinion held by some (but not all) Muslims. That it's sort of related to a religion is no more relevant than the fact that US right-wing politics associates itself with Christianity.

It's crass in context, but if expressed in a personal capacity I can't see any reason he should not express it.

Whereas if a guard went through the train shouting "vote Tory*" that would to me be out of order as that's bringing personal opinions into an employment context.

* Other political parties are available and equally unacceptable in that context.

 

[Aictos]

Does this guy say who his employer was on his FB profile or posts to link him to the employer? If not, then how is he bringing his employer into disrepute?
But making comments such as this on social media with your own name is a little courageous.

It doesn't matter if the employer is mentioned or if there are posts linking him to his former employer, if its known that you are a employee of said former company then anything that can be seen in a negative light will be used against the ex employee as it can be classed as a gross misconduct offence depending on the subject matter for example a former colleague of mine a few years ago openly joked about having to go to a station on the network using the local area staff's nickname for the destination, nothing too bad you would think but the company's social media manager tracked them down and called them personally to tell them to stay off social media for good as it made the company look bad.

As to being a RMT member, I believe he's a fool for not having the RMT represent him as they have access to lawyers and such whereas he would have been in my view far better represented then having no legal advice and being on his own in court.

 

[Horizon22]

Why not, when they concern a political aspect of Islam? It's not really any different to the fact that I oppose the BNP, which is also a political opinion. A desire for a caliphate with Sharia law applicable (including a ban on alcohol) is a political opinion held by some (but not all) Muslims. That it's sort of related to a religion is no more relevant than the fact that US right-wing politics associates itself with Christianity.

It's crass in context, but if expressed in a personal capacity I can't see any reason he should not express it.

Whereas if a guard went through the train shouting "vote Tory*" that would to me be out of order as that's bringing personal opinions into an employment context.

* Other political parties are available and equally unacceptable in that context.

There's plenty of cases all over the place whereby person X has said something deemed offensive (which being anti an entire religion is) on social media on a personal account and has lost their job at Y. They probably don't all have a strong union like the RMT but still the fact remains its a valid course of action.

 

[Bletchleyite]

There's plenty of cases all over the place whereby person X has said something deemed offensive (which being anti an entire religion is) on social media on a personal account and has lost their job at Y. They probably don't all have a strong union like the RMT but still the fact remains its a valid course of action.

This is the quote:
“Thank F*** our pubs open up today. We cannot let our way of life become like some sort of Muslim alcohol-free caliphate just to beat Covid19.”

It's crass but it's stretching it to suggest it's anti an entire religion. It's just a comparative.

Yes, people do get sacked for this, but while I wouldn't post that I don't agree that it should be a sacking matter. If just being a bit crass got you the sack half the country would be out of work.

 

[35B]

This is the quote:
“Thank F*** our pubs open up today. We cannot let our way of life become like some sort of Muslim alcohol-free caliphate just to beat Covid19.”

It's crass but it's stretching it to suggest it's anti an entire religion. It's just a comparative.

Yes, people do get sacked for this, but while I wouldn't post that I don't agree that it should be a sacking matter. If just being a bit crass got you the sack half the country would be out of work.

I tend to agree with you that the reaction was excessive, but the context of him working in an area with a large Muslim population and having to work with Muslim colleagues and customers can’t be ignored.

 

[Horizon22]

This is the quote:
“Thank F*** our pubs open up today. We cannot let our way of life become like some sort of Muslim alcohol-free caliphate just to beat Covid19.”

It's crass but it's stretching it to suggest it's anti an entire religion. It's just a comparative.

Yes, people do get sacked for this, but while I wouldn't post that I don't agree that it should be a sacking matter. If just being a bit crass got you the sack half the country would be out of work.

I didn't say it necessarily was. What I did say is this might be one of a succession of similar types of posts which has come to the attention of WMT.

 

[Wolfie]

It doesn't matter if the employer is mentioned or if there are posts linking him to his former employer, if its known that you are a employee of said former company then anything that can be seen in a negative light will be used against the ex employee as it can be classed as a gross misconduct offence depending on the subject matter for example a former colleague of mine a few years ago openly joked about having to go to a station on the network using the local area staff's nickname for the destination, nothing too bad you would think but the company's social media manager tracked them down and called them personally to tell them to stay off social media for good as it made the company look bad.

As to being a RMT member, I believe he's a fool for not having the RMT represent him as they have access to lawyers and such whereas he would have been in my view far better represented then having no legal advice and being on his own in court.

Re your last para if he did something contrary to RMT policy are they obliged to represent him? I wouldn't imagine that Muslim members would be far from keen on them doing so for example. I am a TU member myself (not RMT) but genuinely don't know what the answer would be.

I tend to agree with you that the reaction was excessive, but the context of him working in an area with a large Muslim population and having to work with Muslim colleagues and customers can’t be ignored.

Exactly

 

[DorkingMain]

Have known a couple of people get sacked for social media posts in the past. They were "on the radar", shall we say.

Suspect there is more to this than meets the eye...