Religious Accommodation

correll dcm

A request to attend Church Mission Conference fall under the Reeligious Accommodation Statute? Help ASAP. Doug

Whatever

The employees we have who attend religious conference take their vacations at the same time. Everyone, so far, seems happy with the arrangement.

HRPeg

I agree with Whatever...our employee's use accrued vacation time to attend religious conferences. These are usually outside the usual requirements of church attendance, etc.

Don D

I agree with the others. No special accomodation is called for. Of course you could not excuse one guy to go to a softball tournament after he burned his leave and not let the person attend the religious conference under the same arrangements. If the request involving the conference attendance calls for some sort of special treatment above and beyond your standard leave and attendance policies, I would treat it as all other requests and not grant it any special treatment.

SDDCHR

For sake of argument, allow the employee to use vacation leave to attend the conference. As Don and the others stated, if this can't be worked out because of staffing or other issues, then handle it as your attendance policy dictates.

lorrie

You should do some more checking on this one. If the employee is willing to use accrued vacation time, that is great. If not - I have heard of some churches that declare their annual conference as a religious holiday. Denying an employee time off to attend might cause problems.

Don D

I've reread your question again. I assume if this had merely been a request for vacation time you owuld not have asked about accomodation because the two are typically mutually exclusive. A person taking vacation, whether to attend a religious conference or shark hunter training in Barbados, would not need to ask for or receive an accomodation.

If there is either no leave program or none left in her bank, treat the request as any other attendance issue in accordance with your policy and past practice. I also think that if she is requesting an accomodation of several days absence to attend, it would be not reasonable under the guidelines of the EEOC. What if she wanted to go to Mecca for a religious holiday and the trip took 7 days? No way.

Trinity

Hey Don, just curious..aren't Muslims required to visit Mecca at least once during their lifetime as part of their religion? Would it therefore fall under the guidelines? :0) In answer to the original post, I know of no religions (mainstream ones anyway)which require someone to attend a conference as part of their religious requirements. There are classes at times, such as catechism classes for catholism that are required, but not any full-blown conferences that I know of. If it is a lesser known religion, however, maybe they do.