Religious Accomodation
hhaynal
231 Posts
All, need your input on how to handle the "me toos" who are anticipated to jump onto the bandwagon.
The situation is this: We have an employee in mfg working 12/hr shifts on the 4/3 rotation (on 3, off 4, on 4, off 3) resulting in working 2 Sundays each month. The employee is a devout, practicing Christian. At the beginning of the year, the employee requested 6 hrs. vacation for every Sunday that he was working in order that he could go to Church in the morning then report to work at noon. By September the employee will have exhausted all his vacation and will continue to take the 6 hours each scheduled Sunday without pay.
The problem is this: We have reason to believe that others want to jump on the band wagon for purposes of having Sundays off over the summer months under the premises of religious observation. Besides a staffing impact on weekends, it affects morale among the dedicated who report as scheduled.
Any suggestions as to handling the me-toos?
The situation is this: We have an employee in mfg working 12/hr shifts on the 4/3 rotation (on 3, off 4, on 4, off 3) resulting in working 2 Sundays each month. The employee is a devout, practicing Christian. At the beginning of the year, the employee requested 6 hrs. vacation for every Sunday that he was working in order that he could go to Church in the morning then report to work at noon. By September the employee will have exhausted all his vacation and will continue to take the 6 hours each scheduled Sunday without pay.
The problem is this: We have reason to believe that others want to jump on the band wagon for purposes of having Sundays off over the summer months under the premises of religious observation. Besides a staffing impact on weekends, it affects morale among the dedicated who report as scheduled.
Any suggestions as to handling the me-toos?
Comments
As far as the others,my question to them would be: "Why are you all of a sudden asking for a religious accomodation since you have not had an objection until now working on Sundays?"
Employees cannot have it both ways. Otherwise, employees would be changing religions like socks. One week they would be Catholic, one week Seventh Day Adventists, etc. in order to get time off.
Sounds to me like they have "summer-itis". As soon as they run out of vacation time for the Sundays off, and are faced with LWOP, they will want to work Sundays again. If they do, in fact, ask for a religious accomodation, ask them to put it in writing as to what their objection is for working on Sunday.
We are currently involved in an EEOC claim over religious discrimination. In our part of the country, courts have generally not upheld the employer's position of deciding who has a "sincerely held" belief & who does not. You need a policy addressing religious accommodation that gives you a consistent procedure to follow, a formal way for employees to request it, & that does not require you to judge who's sincere & who's not.
Also, you don't have to bend over backwards for a religious accommodation the way you do for the ADA. So staffing problems could be an undue hardship.
There's a big ol' Special Report on religion in the workplace, free online if you're an Employment Law Letter subscriber. Log in and go to the yellow box at the bottom of the page.
[url]http://www.hrhero.com/lc/[/url]
Good luck.
James Sokolowski
HRhero.com
You hit upon an issue that we are addressing with the original individual who takes 6 hrs vacation every Sunday he is scheduled to work. His manager wants to know if she can require him to come in to work for 3 hours, leave for Church, and then return to work. The employee's shift begins at 6am. It was also suggested that perhaps the employee could go to another Church that has an earlier service than his own Church. I do not believe we can request either of these options. Forumite opinion?
We are always looking for ways to boost employee moral. Studies repeatedly show that control over schedule and work/life balance rank at the top of what employees are looking for. So, why not at least try to make these accommodations and boost employee morale and loyalty at the same time.
If the whole thing becomes a nightmare you could nix all accommodations as an unreasonable burden.