A 43-year-old Indian woman working at the Heathrow airport has been sacked for wearing a nose stud. Amrit Lalji, of Stanmore in north-west London, was a cleaner and customer relations worker for Eurest, which supplies food and services to British Airways’s (BA’s) VIP lounge at Heathrow. Her job involved greeting first-class passengers at the lounge.
Lalji had been wearing the stud since she started work in March last year. But last month she was told by her bosses at Eurest that BA wanted her to remove the ornament. She refused, saying it was integral to her religious beliefs. Last week, she was fired after a disciplinary hearing. “I feel I am being discriminated against. I wear it as part of my Hindu faith,” said Lalji. A Eurest spokesman reacted: “Jewellery can harbour bacteria, create a hazard when working with machinery and find its way into food.”