Austrian trade union suggests Muslims should be denied Christmas bonuses

Poll conducted by union saw majority of votes in arguing for Muslims to be denied the

A right-wing trade union has stirred debate in Austria by proposing that Muslim workers should not be entitled to Christmas bonuses.

The ‘Free Workers of Upper Austria’ group conducted a poll on its Facebook page, asking it’s 14,000 followers whether they thought everyone was entitled to a bonus regardless of their religion.

The poll titled “Soon new Christmas bonuses will come into force. Muslims will also be eligible, who deny Christian festivals and traditions. What do you think of this?” received 600 responses with majority of votes in the poll arguing for Muslims to be denied the payment at the time of its deletion, according to the Local.



Last week, the Austrian government voted to give an additional €100 to each of the country’s 1.8million pensioners at Christmas. The scheme will cost the country €179 million approximately.

The union, which is closely linked to Austria’s far-right FPÖ party, deleted the poll soon after it was criticised.  Gerhard Knoll, national chair of the Free Workers union, said the poll only wanted to discuss the new payments.

“We wanted to open a discussion, pointing out a double standard: many Muslims have a problem with the word Christmas and there was a discussion about whether to rename winter markets because it annoyed them,” Knoll told der Standard.



“With the Christmas bonus, suddenly Muslims have no problem with the word Christmas. But we are not demanding that the government denies them payments, that would be really discriminatory.

“We have taken the poll off the internet, it was overdone and this kind of discussion does not fit the peaceful nature of the festive season.”

This article originally appeared on Independent