Q: Recently, my employer announced that beginning next month, all employees will be required to come in to work one Saturday each month. Although we will be paid overtime for working the extra day and I could use the extra money, I can’t do it. I’m Jewish and believe God ordained Saturday, the Sabbath, as a day of rest which must be kept holy. It’s one of the Ten Commandments. I asked my boss if I could be exempt from the Saturday work on religious grounds, but he said that would leave him without a full shift one Saturday a month, and he’d have to keep the business closed. Without everyone available, he could not conduct business. My first shift is scheduled at the end of next month. If I don’t show, I’m afraid I will lose my job.
A: If at least 15 people are employed where you work, you are probably off the hook for the Saturday shift. Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires employers to accommodate the “religious practices” of their employees unless doing so would impose an “undue hardship on the conduct of the employer’s business.”
In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Groff v DeJoy that an employer can prove a worker’s request would be an “undue hardship” if the accommodation would “result in substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business.” In that case, Groff, a USPS employee, asked for Sundays off for religious reasons. Allowing Groff the day off, however, meant other workers, including the local postmaster,...
A Delhi court has acquitted SKS Ispat and Power Ltd and four others, including the brother of former Union minister Subodh Kant Sahay, in a case related to alleged irregularities in the allocation...