Gurdit Singh, with help of American Civil Liberties Union, won right to drive regular routes after alleging Florida theme park restricted his work
Gurdit Singh, a Disney World postman, claims the theme park discriminate against him based on his religious faith. Photograph: ACLU
When people hear that Gurdit Singh is a postman at Disney World, Florida, visions might come to mind of a man waving to Mickey Mouse and Snow White on his daily delivery route.
But at a theme park where dreams supposedly come true, the postman has claimed segregation from Disney customers and its staff because of his turban and beard.
Now Singh, a Sikh, has won the right to drive regular routes – even in this most irregular of postal delivery codes, free of discrimination.
Singh has worked as a private postman at Disney World in Florida since 2008, but he says he only drove an out-of-sight route while other park delivery workers switched routes every few weeks. He attempted to get Disney to switch him to the regular rotation with no success before contacting the American Civil Liberties Union and the Sikh Coalition.
“Where companies have these look policies or other uniform standards, it’s especially difficult for individuals of minority faiths to meet the requirements and so it disproportionately affects them,” Heather Weaver, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU, told the Guardian.
In May, the ACLU and the Sikh Coalition wrote a letter to Disney demanding that Singh be granted religious accommodation, so that he could drive in the regular rotation and follow his faith.
“My turban and beard serve as a constant reminder of my commitment to my faith ... these articles remind everybody that we’re all equal,” Singh told the BBC. “That’s not just a Sikh value, that’s an American value.”
Weaver told the Guardian that Disney responded to their letter quickly.
“They immediately recognized that their previous denials of religious accommodation had been wrong and started to take steps to make sure he worked all the mail routes,” she said.
“I think this is a great first step to ensuring that Disney’s workforce is religiously diverse and that customers see that in their interactions with Disney’s employees.”
In the letter, Disney not only granted Singh’s request but defended its position as a non-discriminatory company.
“Walt Disney Parks and Resorts US Inc is an employer of choice that is committed to diversity and prohibits discrimination based upon religion,” they wrote.
But Gurjot Kaur, a lawyer for the Sikh Coalition, told the BBC that Singh had faced issues with Disney before. He first applied for a job in 2005, the attorney said, and was told he would have to work in the back because of his turban and beard. He said Singh later applied to be a doorman with the company in 2008 and was rejected “because his ‘costume’ did not match the ‘costume’ necessary”. Singh believed the company was referring to his turban and beard.
Disney did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
0 comments:
Post a Comment