(Transcript from World News Australia Radio)
Discriminating against an employee on religious grounds is illegal in Australia and 23-year-old Mariam El Hassan is accusing her employer of five years of doing just that.
Mariam El Hassan had been working at an accountancy firm in Wollongong for five years, when she advised her employer she wanted to start wearing a head scarf.
Michelle Walsh, senior associate with Turner Freeman lawyers, told Sonja Heydeman the 23-year-old was extremely upset when she was told a hijab was not OK at the office.
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A New South Wales accountancy firm says it will not be making any comment on allegations it refused to allow its employee to come to work wearing a hijab.
Lawyer Michelle Walsh says her client advised her employer that she wanted to start wearing the hijab but each time she raised the subject it was never properly addressed.
Ms Walsh says the matter came to a head last month.
"In October, she indicated that she would be starting to wear the hijab to coincide with Eid which is a Muslim celebration and she had taken one day off to celebrate Eid on the morning that she was to return to work which was the 16th of October she was informed that she could not come into work wearing the hijab," she says.
Ms Walsh says her client has not worked at the firm since then.
"She was extremely distressed, there is a text message exchange between herself and her manager wherein she expressed her distress and the manager was simply saying to her well, you know, you cannot wear it, you cannot come in wearing that," Ms Walsh says.
The matter goes to mediation next month and Ms Walsh says what is alleged by her client amounts to a clear case of discrimination.
"The Fair Work Act is clear and it says that an employer cannot discriminate against an employee on religious grounds and other grounds, but one of the grounds is on the basis of their religion. Really the only defence to that is that the inherent requirements of the position require that the discrimination to occur but one cannot see in this instance why Miss El Hassan would not be able to wear the hijab to work. As far as I'm aware, there was no uniform at the workplace and no real reason why it would not have been reasonable for her to wear the hijab," Ms Walsh says.
The accountancy firm, Master Tax and Finance, has told SBS it will not be making any comment until after a mediation session which is due next month.
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