Daily Lessons from Life 04 October 2013 - Church seeks judicial review on MOM decision

"Church seeks judicial review on MOM decision - CNA 04 October 2013 SINGAPORE: One of Singapore's mega churches filed documents in the High Court on Wednesday seeking a judicial review to quash a decision made by the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) regarding a sacked employee. Earlier this year, Faith Community Baptist Church was ordered by Acting Manpower Minister Tan Chuan-Jin to compensate a pregnant worker it had sacked for committing adultery. The Attorney-General's Chambers said it is studying the application. According to court documents, the church said that the acting manpower minister's decision was unconstitutional and breaches its right to manage its own religious affairs. It added that the ministry did not consider matters that included the implied terms of the employee's contract -- that sexual misconduct constitutes a ground of termination -- and the values of the church in relation to what constitutes staff misconduct. The ministry had said that employment laws have to be applied equally to all, regardless of their religion, and its role is to protect employees' rights in their workplaces. Experts said this is a landmark case and that the courts in Singapore have not had to decide if behaving morally constitutes an implied term in an employment contract. Lawyer Steven Lam said: "This current case is unique. If it's not an employment term, expressed term, should the courts imply a morality term into the employment contract, simply because you're working in religious organisation? "And I can understand the difficulty here, because morality is something that is not cast in stone. "There are different standards of morality, so the question that we ask ourselves -- if it's going to be an implied term -- then whose standard, and what standard? So that's a big question mark we are dealing with." Dr Jack Lee, Assistant Professor at the Singapore Management University's School of Law, said: "The courts in Singapore have not really had to decide on many occasions the issue of: to what extent religious groups are permitted to take actions that are in accordance with their religion, but which may come into conflict with general laws that apply to everyone else. "So it will be quite interesting to see how the court will deal with the balance between the two possibly conflicting factors."" Well well well. What a surprise. The Faith Community Baptist Church decided to challenge the MOM decision based on constitutional rights. Most thought this matter had been settled as religion and state affairs must not mix. They are potent and dangerous mixture for sure. Lessons for me are: 1. it shows that Singapore is a democratic society where the rules of laws while been respected also allowed challenges to them if one feels so aggrieved. This is something to be proud off and possibly can break the myth that 'the government cannot be challenged'. Though the recent 'To hold or not to hold by-election' episode did not end very well for the person who filed the complaint, this one seems promising?; 2. I will leave the experts in laws to work out what is the appropriate interpretation of the laws on things like: implied terms of employment, suppression of the constitutional rights of a religious body, etc. What I do see quite clearly is: strict interpretation of the 'she is married' even though she was separated from her husband. So by laws, she is married but by all intents and purposes she is no longer with her husband when this 'sexual impropriety' happened. Of course, subsequent to the discovery, the Church leadership did asked her to acknowledge her 'mistakes' and to go on the 'right path', which she renegaded on. So, the arguments can go either way; 3. from the government standpoint, the matter has to be narrowed to: is this a case of protecting a performing employee which had committed 'immoral act' that damaged the reputation of the employer AND inducing actual losses - financial or otherwise? It has nothing to do with the employer being a religious organization or not. If this is the case, the Catholic Church and Vatican would have to be disbanded as some, not many as one must be fair, of their members and leaders are committing many immoral acts that are known and I do not need to elaborate here. On balance, the compensation to the 'sacked' employee is not a big sum. While I admire the single-mindedness of Pastor Kong, I am not sure if he has become emotional about the whole time. Alas, I am wrong to say that as Religion is very much an emotional thing. Whatever the reasons for filing this challenge, I do hope that the judiciary branch will consider the bigger implication of 'not mixing religion with secular matters', without prejudice.