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The Employer Handbook BlogThat time when an employee argued that taking vacation days was “discipline.”
I’m gonna let you in on a little secret — an easy-peasy way to accommodate an employee who needs a day off from work as a religious accommodation…
Articles Posted in Religion
Want to wear a Phillie Phanatic hat to work for religious reasons? That could get you fired in Minnesota.
Baseball as a religion? Remember what Annie Savoy from the great Bull Durham said:
“I believe in the Church of Baseball. I’ve tried all the major religions, and most of the minor ones. I’ve worshipped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, trees, mushrooms, and Isadora Duncan. I know things. For instance, there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and there are 108 stitches in a baseball. When I learned that, I gave Jesus a chance. But it just didn’t work out between us. The Lord laid too much guilt on me. I prefer metaphysics to theology….I’ve tried ’em all, I really have, and the only church that truly feeds the soul, day in, day out, is the Church of Baseball.”
586,860 and 3/4 reasons not to question the sincerity of an employee’s religious beliefs
Nearly four years ago, I blogged here about a complaint that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had filed against a West Virginia coal company. The lawsuit alleged that the employer failed to accommodate an employee who requested not to use a biometric hand scanner to track time and attendance.
Why? Because of the relationship between hand-scanning technology and the Mark of the Beast and Antichrist discussed in the Book of Revelation of the New Testament.
Of course. Continue reading
The best way to prepare your workplace now for President Trump’s new Religious Freedom Executive Order
Yeah, that’s basically it. Keep calm and carry on. Continue reading
Our day at Epcot: Food, characters and, yes, an employment-law lesson
Remember Hank the Septopus from Disney’s Finding Dory? I found his missing tentacle. And, my son ate it!
Swastika cupcakes?!?
Yesterday, I read this story from David Moye on Huffington Post about a young Jewish girl’s birthday party at which the guests — friends of the birthday girl — were allowed to frost cupcakes. Well, it seems that two of the party guests decided that it would be funny to frost a chocolate swastika into their cupcakes and upload photos to Snapchat.
The mortified mother of the birthday girl called it a “teachable moment” about the horrors of the Holocaust, which, ironically, the swastika frosters had just learned about in school.
So, what does this have to do with your workplace?
Got young employees? They pray to different gods? Then, you need this EEOC fact sheet.
Less colloquially, last Friday, the EEOC released this one-page fact sheet “designed to help young workers better understand their rights and responsibilities under the federal employment anti-discrimination laws prohibiting religious discrimination.” You can read the EEOC press release here.
New EEOC lawsuit highlights the discrimination risks of mandatory flu shots
Last week, the EEOC announced (here) that it had filed this lawsuit against a Massachusetts employer, in which it alleges that the company violated federal law when it refused to effectively accommodate an employee’s religious beliefs.
It’s a wicked pissah!
