Opinion ID: 2040077
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Outreach of Owens' Faith in the Marketplace

Text: This is a general statement of how Owens applied his religious convictions to the operation of his business. The particularized findings of fact and conclusions of law of the examiner, which raise more than constitutional issues, will be discussed further in Part III. Following his religious conversion, as well as two periods of imminent bankruptcy, Owens resolved to conduct his business as an evangelical, fundamentalist discipleship. This was augmented by improved secular business practices not inconsistent with that discipleship. The business prospered, and Owens attributed the turnaround as being the result of God's working in the management of [his] business. Both club members and employees were made aware of this business posture. A 14-foot-wide sign, with an unrecorded Scriptural quotation, hangs in the main office. Evangelistic Christian placards, pamphlets, magazines, and books  some free and others for sale  are placed in the lounges and other public areas of the several clubs. Bible study classes during the afternoon shift change are made available to all employees; one study leader was identified as a woman managerial employee of Roman Catholic faith, and other managerial leaders, including Owens and Crevier, apparently are Protestants. A chapter of Toastmasters International was established, and sales personnel are required to attend; as required by the charter of the international organization, all sessions start with prayer, and members deliver speeches of their own choosing, frequently on subjects religious in nature. [7] Exclamations of joy  like Hallelujah! or Praise the Lord! ( see Psalm 148)  by employees are not uncommon. This working environment  indisputably a matter of lawful business judgment  was explained to applicants for employment. One purpose of this explanation was to determine whether the prospective employee would be antagonistic or offended by such working conditions. [8] Owens  or sometimes one of the vice presidents if managerial employees were not involved  undertook, in addition, to learn if an applicant had a teachable spirit and a disciplined lifestyle, somewhat interchangeable attitudinal terms. Discipline and disciple, according to Webster's Dictionary, have a common connection to the word teachable. These objectives involved inquiry into family and marital status, for two reasons: first, if it revealed an immoral relationship, Owens was not willing to subsidize it with employment; second, if the applicant came from a disciplined home environment, it revealed a favorable likelihood that the applicant had learned submission to authority, acceptance of a task to be done, and capacity to complete that task. [9] Owens considered that employees who resisted authority and instruction demonstrated, in Owens' words, a lack of enthusiasm. They're not able to do, and they don't want to do, these task things to reach the goals that we have set for them. [10] (Emphasis supplied.) Owens believes, not surprisingly, that a person's religion  if any  permeates, motivates, and directs every thought and action of that person's life, private and public. It is undisputed that no person will be initially employed in or subsequently promoted to a managerial position unless he or she is a born again and growing Christian. Unlike non-managerial employees, attendance at Bible study sessions is mandatory. Owens' Scriptural basis for this standard is in St. Paul's words of counsel to members of the church in Corinth: Do not try to work together as equals with unbelievers, for it cannot be done. How can right and wrong be partners? How can light and darkness live together? How can Christ and the Devil agree? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? 2 Corinthians 6:14-15. The religion-related standards for managerial employees are the most pronounced and conspicuous of those found by the examiner as violative of the anti-discrimination statute. Commonsense and common law, however, should make them the least subject to sanction. All employees, to a lesser or greater extent, have a fiduciary relationship to their employers, Restatement (Second) Agency §§ 1, 2, 13 (1957), with a duty to act in the interests of the employer and not as an adversary. This principle has been greatly diminished in the decades following the enactment of modern labor relations laws, but it is most significant that those statutes uniformly exempt managerial employees from adversarial collective bargaining relationships. The federal Labor-Management Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. § 152 (1976), in its definition of employee, expressly excludes any individual employed as a supervisor. Although the statute makes no mention of managerial employee, it is construed, a fortiori, to exclude them as well. See N.L.R.B. v. Bell Aerospace Co., 416 U.S. 267, 94 S.Ct. 1757, 40 L.Ed.2d 134 (1974). As stated in N.L. R.B. v. Yeshiva University, 444 U.S. 672, 682, 100 S.Ct. 856, 862, 63 L.Ed.2d 115 (1980), both exemptions grow out of the same concern: that an employer is entitled to the undivided loyalty of its representatives. The Minnesota Labor Relations Act does not contain a specific definition, but Minn.Stat. § 179.16, subd. 2 (1984), provides that [s]upervisory employees shall not be considered in the selection of a bargaining agent. Paul W. Goldberg, the present director of the Minnesota Bureau of Mediation Services, and his predecessor, Peter E. Obermeyer, confirm that units of managerial employees have never been certified for collective bargaining purposes with a private employer in Minnesota. The commonsense of these statutes, and commonsense without statutes, is that no business person would wish or should be required to be associated at the critical managerial level with a person who rejects the basic operational objectives and philosophy of the business enterprise. The point just stated can be illustrated by the hypothetical example of two not-so-hypothetical Minnesota business corporations that sell books and other publications but that have radically different business philosophies. Corporation A operates stores selling predominantly religious publications, openly displayed in sections bearing such descriptive signs as Bible Commentaries, Bible Stories for Children, and Theology; corporation B operates stores selling only secular books and magazines, including a large number of so-called adult books and magazines. I pose what are to me self-answering negative answers to these questions: Should corporation B be required to employ as a clerk an evangelical Christian who would find that working environment offensive? Should corporation A be required to employ an atheist who would find its working environment at least uncomfortable and who very probably would be reluctant to read any such books for the purpose of discussing and answering inquiries from interested customers? It is unthinkable that corporation B should be required to employ a branch or general manager who would be in a position actually to discourage the sale of materials he or she thought pornographic, just as corporation A should not be required to employ in a managerial position one who would convey his or her disinterest or disdain to its employees or customers. This being so, it makes absolutely no sense to forbid the asking of a religion-related question that would disclose these basic incompatibilities, unless the even more absurd answer were to be that the person should be hired first, without such inquiry, and only later discharged for nonperformance of the duties of loyalty and performance owed the employer at either place of business.