As with disabilities, so also with an employee’s religious beliefs: an employer is required to provide a reasonable accommodation, and this requirement is not unlimited. In Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and David Wise v. Firestone Fibers & Textiles Company, et al., Nos. 06-2203 and 06-2241, Firestone claimed that the plaintiff requested an unreasonable accommodation. A District court granted summary judgment against EEOC and Wise, and the Fourth Circuit affirmed.
Firestone provides employees with a standard attendance accommodation consisting of 15 vacation days and three floating holidays. During the events leading to this lawsuit, employees also were permitted to swap shifts twice per quarter and to take up to 60 hours of unexplained, unpaid leave. Any employee who used more than 60 hours of unpaid leave was subject to termination.
Wise needed much more. In 2001 he joined the Living Church of God, which he said required him to refrain from working during the Sabbath, from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. He also said he needed time off to observe seven sets of religious holidays, totaling 20 days a year. Wise initially had no attendance problems because his shift did not conflict with his Sabbath observances, and he often used vacation days for the religious holidays. The scheduling conflicts began following a workforce reduction, and also involved minimum staffing requirements for the laboratory where Wise worked. Firestone terminated Wise in September 2002 after he missed work to observe two religious holidays, despite having already used up his remaining unpaid leave.
The appeals panel said Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires that employers must “reasonably accommodate” a worker’s religious beliefs, but this does not mean it must totally accommodate such beliefs. “This is not an area for absolutes,” the panel said. “Religion does not exist in a vacuum in the workplace. Rather, it coexists, both with intensely secular arrangements such as a collective bargaining agreements, and with the intensely secular pressures of the workplace.”
Firestone had several mechanisms to reasonably accommodate employee requests for religious accommodation: the seniority-based bidding system for work shifts, the collective bargaining agreement’s provision of vacation days and floating holidays, allowing employees to swap shifts, and an attendance policy providing 60 hours of unpaid leave for any reason. EEOC argued that Firestone could have resolved work schedule conflicts by allowing Wise more than 60 hours of unpaid leave. The appeals panel rejected this argument. “It is well-established that Title VII does not require an employer to violate the terms of a collective bargaining agreement, especially provisions pertaining to seniority-based scheduling,” the panel said.
