Britain Moves To Protect Unemployed for Shabbat
Britain has issued guidelines to ensure that Sabbath-observant Jews are not denied unemployment benefits for refusing to work on Saturdays.
The guidelines set down by the Department for Work and Pensions in an internal memo to Jobcentre employment agencies across the country is called “The Jewish Sabbath,” the London Jewish Chronicle reported.
The memo explains that the Jewish Sabbath requires refraining from work.
According to the guidelines, Jewish job seekers can limit their hours on a certain day as long as they can work 40 hours in a week.
The guidelines were issued several weeks after Britain’s employment minister said she would introduce regulations to make Jews who refuse to work on their Sabbath eligible for welfare benefits.
There have been at least 50 cases of people from different religions being denied unemployment benefits because the claimants’ religious observance interfered with their ability to work, the Jewish Chronicle reported. At least 15 cases involved Jews, five of whom won tribunal cases against the welfare department.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO