The worker was dismissed after he made a post on an internal company forum in which he opposed gay rights and voiced his criticism of the LGBT community, according to media reports. He used quotes from the Bible to make his point.
Poland’s ruling conservatives have slammed the world’s largest furniture retailer, and the country’s justice minister has ordered prosecutors to investigate the case.
In the meantime, some politicians have suggested that customers should boycott Ikea stores if the probe found the company at fault.
Gazeta Polska Codziennie, a Polish conservative daily, reported on Monday that some internet users were saying they would stop buying the company’s products.
Poland’s Deputy Justice Minister Marcin Romanowski has said in a statement that the worker’s dismissal smacks of “discrimination” and “violates the freedom of conscience and religion."
Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro has told public broadcaster TVP Info that the case appears to be one of workplace discrimination. He called such an approach “unacceptable” and “scandalous.”
According to reports, the worker fired by Ikea argued that "promotion of homosexuality and other deviations,” as he put it, was “offensive to the public.”
Ikea’s head of corporate communications, Katarzyna Broniarek, has been quoted as saying that her company’s corporate culture is based on the “freedom of ideas, tolerance and respect for each employee.”
Tens of thousands, among them diplomats from the United States, Canada and other Western nations, last month took to the streets of Warsaw in an annual Equality Parade.
Meanwhile, several hundred parents in March staged a protest in Warsaw against a pro-LGBT move by the city’s mayor amid a row over suggestions that gay couples in Poland should be allowed to marry and adopt children.
Poland’s conservative leader Jarosław Kaczyński said earlier this year that his ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party would not agree to same-sex marriages and to gay couples adopting children.
Speaking at a political convention in mid-March, Kaczyński also hit out at a pro-LGBT declaration signed earlier this year by Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski.
(gs/pk)
Source: Gazeta Polska Codziennie, Rzeczpospolita