Airline Boycott?
October 17, 2006
According to the daily Die Welt, CSU member of the Bundestag Johannes Singhammer submitted a letter to Bundestag President Norbert Lammert proposing members of the German parliament no longer fly with the British airline.
The CSU is the CDU's Bavarian sister party.
"As a Christian I consider the airline's decision absolutely unacceptable and discriminatory, and contrary to basic Christian principles," the letter said.
"The German Bundestag should send a clear signal that it rejects such steps," Singhammer wrote. "It should lodge a formal complaint and for the time being refuse to book flights with British Airways for members of the legislature and its administration."
Discriminatory?
BA last week suspended check-in worker Nadia Eweida, 55, for wearing a necklace with a cross to work, even though it allows Muslims and Sikhs to wear headscarves and turbans.
Eweida, whose father is an Egyptian Coptic Christian and whose mother is English, was ordered by a manager at Heathrow Airport to remove her cross or hide it beneath a company cravat.
She then asked for permission to wear the chain but was refused and suspended without pay for three weeks in a decision that has raised eyebrows in Britain.
Eweida plans to sue her employer for religious discrimination.