Jehovah's Witness Fired for Religious Beliefs
A Labor Inspectorate committee has ruled that a woman fired from her job at a Tallinn kindergarten was the victim of religious discrimination and ordered her employer to pay compensation.
The woman, a Jehovah's Witness, appealed to the inspectorate's Labor Dispute Committee after being terminated at the end of last year, Delfi reported. In her statement, she said that she had never received any complaints from either the administration or parents before losing her job.
According to the woman, when answering parents' questions about why she had been fired, her employer openly cited her non-traditional way of celebrating birthdays, Christmas and Easter, as well as an incident, which the woman disputes, where she supposedly left three children unattended in a library.
The committee found that the woman's work contract had been terminated on religious grounds and ordered the employer to pay her 607 euros, equivalent to one month's salary.
A lawyer for the Legal Information Center for Human Rights told Delfi that the case was rare in Estonia as it involved discrimination against a religious minority.
Steve Roman