We had the religious accommodation problem in a class at IBM. We were given a lecture on lab safety that required employees to remove all rings. clips and jewelry before entering the lab. About a third of the class revolted saying they had taken oaths never to remove wedding rings, necklaces with religious symbols and religious pins. And, they were adamant. The company could not direct them to violate their religious oaths.
After a delay of a few hours, the company issued a written response to each member of the class:
No manager can require an employee to violate his personal beliefs.
Students are responsible for completing course material.
Lab safety rules will be enforced.
They are independent variables. If your chosen life style is more important than the job then you should pursue it. Any action required is on the part of the employee not the employer.
(please excuse me if I use some terms here incorrectly. This happened 20 years before I was born, and I only met this uncle once or twice as a kid)
During WW II, one of my uncles was training soldiers with live grenades. After pulling the pin, the grenade got caught on his wedding ring. He lost an arm and much of the use of one leg. I’m pretty sure he wishes he had removed his wedding ring for safety.
Said another way, local management simply refused any and all accommodations. Including any that may have been required by law. Probably wasn’t smart then and certainly not smart now.
I haven’t read all the responses so this may have been covered already.
In some/many jurisdictions the question of Sunday work as referenced would be neither here nor there since there may well already be employment law in place to supersede this.
Both employee’s were hired to work at a business that’s closed Sunday. The business at some future date decides to open Sunday. Therefore they’ve altered the employment contract. And there is an employment contract, written or not (at least where I reside). Therefore both employee’s would be well within their rights to refuse to work Sunday. Employer repercussion is another matter, with other possible consequences. But in court, both employees would win.
Maybe - it depends on whether safety really required the removal of all rings and jewelry since impairing workplace safety is considered an undue hardship.
Canada. All provinces have a varying set of Employment Standards. These are basic rights. On top of this there’s the courts. So for example; an employee can be fired at will by an employer, provided the employer pays severance. This amount can vary depending on how long an employee has worked for the company. And assuming of course that the firing is unjustified. Government standards law sets out an amount of severance to be paid. However the court system (not the government system) will likely take into account further considerations and can award considerably more, depending on circumstances.
This doesn’t stop lousy employers from flouting the law or using intimidating factors etc. on their employees. However at some point they’ll go up against the wrong employee and find out the hard way how the law works.
Edit: If a union is involved the union contract covers the employee, not the government standards.
In Canada the religious accommodation thing surfaces from time to time as a fairly significant issue. On one hand we generally try to be accepting (if not encouraging) of diversity, and I for the most part really think that that is a good thing. So we have military personnel who wear turbans and hijabs. But now, in Quebec for the last few years the provincial government has established a law that forbids provincial public servants from visibly displaying anything religious. Many who are against this law believe that it is intended specifically as an anti Muslim law (and/or anti-any other non-Christian law) as it will basically impact those groups only. Thus there are news stories of hijab-wearing teachers who have felt forced to quit their jobs.
I’m personally of two minds about religious accommodations. While I strongly believe that one’s religion is a choice, I don’t care what someone wears because of it, as long as it doesn’t violate any health and safety regulations. But I also don’t believe that one’s religion should give special privileges in terms of diet and time off etc.
No, there were no reasonable accommodations available. The lab course was a non-negotiable requirement for the job, and lab safety was a non-negotiable part of the lab course, and wearing jewelry was unsafe in the lab.
This is not analogous to the situation in the OP. If the business in the OP allows Sam to rearrange his schedule to make it to his son’s basketball games, then clearly rearranging schedules is something that is possible and reasonable within the requirements of the job. If, having established that they can do that in some cases, the business then refuses to allow Dan to rearrange his schedule for religious reasons, then they’re refusing a reasonable religious accommodation, and are in trouble.
More analogous would be if the company in the OP were busiest on the weekend, and therefore required that all employees work on both Saturday and Sunday, with no exemptions for religion or family sports events. They might have a tougher time proving in court that that’s a genuine requirement, accommodation to which would be unreasonable, than the lab would, but it’d at least be something they could argue.
I did once work at a place where, in fact, the weekends were the busiest time, and so, while all employees got two days off per week (a different two for each employee), at most one of those days off could be Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. Which makes it simple.
I’m curious as to what happened. Did some employees refuse to take the class? Did some employees decide to quit? Did some employees remove their jewelry in order to take the class?
Yes, because they are independent variables. There is no conjunction between life style and lab safety that can be negotiated. As Dr.Winston_OBoogie illustrates, It’s a hazardous environment.
Also, we were working on machine failures where protective shielding had been removed and electrical contacts and moving parts were exposed to human error. How was the companys’ position ‘not smart’.
There was some grumbling and a few tried to negotiate by wrapping tape on jewelry. But, after a couple of hours in the lab it was obvious that the rules made sense. That stuff was really dangerous. Nobody quit.
I don’t have an opinion on smart, but it is frequently illegal to have a no exceptions considered, no consideration needed kind of policy when it comes to requests for accommodations.
In terms of what is good or colloquially reasonable, opinions can vary. But anyone who is comfortable saying that an absolutely rigid policy like that is absolutely 100% legal always is not familiar with how these things get litigated.
Taping over the rings is a great example. There’s a reason they’re called reasonable accommodations.
You make a good point. The problem arises though when absolutes collide. When you lean over a machine with a spinning geneva you do not want to dangle a cross from you neck. That may conflict with your oath to wear a cross, but the potential result is independent of that. Same is true of getting a wedding ring across two wires that can deliver 6.3V at a couple of hundred amps. Paper running through an un shielded high speed printer generates hundreds of thousands of volts in static electricity. It’s looking for any metal object it can arc to. The shock isn’t fatal but the jolt can cause you to make a move that gets you tangled up in the machinery.
I believe any legal issues would revolve around obedience to the rules not the absolute nature of safe procedures.
@Jimmy_Chitwood answered for me. It might be not smart in a legal sense.
Believe me that I think the right number of religious accommodations is zero. Zero is also the right number of religions and religious adherents. But we don’t live in that world and neither do large corporations.
During my years at Boeing, occasionally we would get a new hire that said they can’t work on Sundays due to their religion. HR would pull out the employment agreement that every new hire signs when hired. One of the items that required initials while going over the contract states that you must be available to work your assigned 40 hour work week plus any overtime, Saturdays and Sundays included, as needed and per the union contract. This was also in the union contract under the section about mandatory overtime.
In the world of big corporations, pretty much the answer is as @racer72 says.
When I got my last job it took an hour to e-sign all the documents waiving every single one of my few legal rights under US employment law. Take it or leave it.
Perhaps in some alternate universe the workers of the country could unite to make it illegal, and punishable, for any employer to ask, much less require, an employee to waive a legal right. But I/we do not live in that alternate universe.
Congress might, very occasionally giveth. But the Boss promptly taketh away.
In General, you can not be required to sign away your rights, and more or less any such contract in null and void. IANAL. This however, is very much a YMMV.
I agree that’s how the law generally reads and is sometimes enforced.
But what such documents do do and quite effectively is greatly raise the difficulty level for an employee wanting to demand their rights through the legal process. It’s just one more expensive barrier the Corporate Overlords erect in front of their underlings.
I currently live in Spain where almost everything that is not a bar or restaurant is closed on Sundays. I’m sure it started that way because of the church, but now it’s more of a workers’ rights issue. There would be a massive outcry if people couldn’t have dinner at their abuela’s house on Sunday.