GM's Diversity Policy Excludes Religious-Based Employee Groups

(CNSNews.com) - General Motors' corporate policy of allowing employees to create "affinity groups" is the target of a discrimination complaint after one employee says his request to organize fellow workers for Christian-related activities was rejected.

John Moranski, who has worked at the G.M. factory in Indianapolis, Ind., for three years, filed the discrimination complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) June 20.

General Motors began sanctioning employee-initiated affinity groups in 1999 in order to promote workplace diversity and improve employer-employee communications. The company's recognition of an affinity group allows that group access to corporate facilities and communications, as well as other benefits for sponsoring activities.

Moranski complained that he was first denied the opportunity to publish, in the factory's daily newsletter, an invitation for other employees to join him in a lunchtime prayer session on May 2, 2002, the National Day of Prayer.

Moranski said he then applied for formal recognition of a Christian Employee Network as a G.M. Affinity Group in December of 2002. His request was denied, both Moranski and G.M. agree, because the group's affinity was religious-based.

"They implicitly said that because your group is religious, we're not going to allow it, and it was because they assume for people [who] are religious, that they can't just not evangelize," said Drew Gardner, attorney with the Seminole, Fla., based Gibbs law firm. The law firm serves as general counsel to the Christian Law Association and is representing Moranski in the filing of his complaint.

Gardner noted that Moranski had explicitly stated in his application for the affinity group that "we are an inter-denominational group and will not promote a particular church or religious denomination in the workplace."

A spokesman for General Motors defended the company's decision, stating: "G.M. respects the religious freedom of our employees."

However, Brian Akre, G.M.'s director of news relations in Detroit, Mich., added that the company "does not recognize religious or political organizations as company-sponsored affinity groups because of the potentially infinite number of such groups and because of the divisiveness inherent in trying to accommodate their widely disparate views."

On its company website, General Motors defines diversity as the "collective mixture of similarities and differences" and states "that managing diversity includes race and gender as well as broader dimensions like age, family status, religion, sexual orientation, level of education, physical abilities, military status, union represented/non-represented, years of service, language and many others."

But G.M.'s affinity groups, Akre said, generally are limited to those whose focus is based on primary dimensions of diversity, which are factors that cannot be changed or chosen, such as ethnic background, gender or physical disabilities."

And such distinctions are precisely why Gardner views G.M.'s policy as violating Moranski's rights.

"G.M.'s treatment of religious beliefs as different from a 'common social identity' such as race, disabilities, gender or sexual orientation is disparate treatment of religion," said Gardner. He added that G.M.'s rationale for refusing to recognize Moranski's group, "we would say is illegal under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act."

While complimenting General Motors for its overall diversity program and other employee initiatives, Moranski said the denial of his religious-based affinity group "is inconsistent with the rest of their employee program."

The EEOC has yet to formally respond to Moranski's employment discrimination complaint.

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