Zalando fires an Arab employee for objecting to their statements in support of Israel

Berlin – On December 5th, 2024, the labour court Berlin (Arbeitsgericht Berlin) has settled the case of Mohamad S. supported by the European Legal Support Center (ELSC). Mohamad is a marketing professional and was working at Zalando SE in Berlin as a Senior Media Testing manager but received a termination of his contract following his expression of solidarity with Palestine. 

It all started with the worker’s council as well as the management board posting biased “solidarity with Israel” statements on internal channels days after October 7th, 2023. Mohamed, as well as other individuals and groups such as “Muslim community Zalando” and “Black community Zalando” objected to these statements mostly by expressing criticism in the comments section, exercising their freedom of speech. [...]

When the attempts to push him out of the company failed, he finally received a termination letter in June 2024 and decided to file a lawsuit against unfair dismissal. Furthermore, Mohamad filed an anti-discrimination complaint case, which was settled in the second hearing on December 5th as well. 

During the first hearing at the Berlin Labour Court, on 14 August 2024, it became clear that Zalando’s termination of Mohamad’s contract was unlawful and based on vague accusations of misconduct to justify the dismissal. When questioned, the company argued this libellous accusation was based on him saying “Yallah” to another person.

Mohamad holds a Lebanese nationality and was heavily affected by Israel’s latest assault on his country. [...]

Mohamad comments: “At some point, I was told by HR, that “misogyny is part of my culture”. The particularities of this incident showed a repulsive bigotry by Zalando’s management and HR in its blatancy and audacity but are by no means unique. Zalando Muslims have faced pressure to self-censor their pro-Palestine support on their personal social media accounts, causing many to leave the company, while Muslim employees (constituting some 40% of the workforce in some German warehouses) increasingly report challenges in securing reasonable accommodations for their religious practices since October 2023.

Racist discrimination at Zalando as a typical example of German corporate environment

Zalando is not an exception but a typical example of the racist anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab corporate environment in Germany. Employees in German companies risk being fired for posting about Palestine online. [...]

There is a powerful racist trope at play here: “imported antisemitism”. Many Germans implicitly or explicitly claim migrants (from Arab/Muslim countries) are inherently antisemitic and must be disciplined by the ‘’enlightened German’’ who has “learned from the past”. [...] We should understand these in the larger context of economic and political German interests and border regimes.  

Threats to residency status and/or naturalisation are essential in this context as they are often connected to employment contracts. This leaves many people scared to speak up and can lead to serious consequences for people’s livelihoods whenever they do speak up.