Religious discrimination charges have now been filed against Cargill for having fired about 150 Muslim employees who complained about insufficient time for prayer breaks during their work shifts.
The workers, who are mostly Somalian immigrants, allege that the Cargill facility in Fort Morgan, Colorado, restricted them from leaving their work stations for brief prayer sessions. They contend that this deviated from a long-standing practice that was more lenient in regard to prayer breaks.
Workers Lose Faith in Employer Practice
The issue came to a head in December last year when the workers claimed that they were not allowed to leave their work stations to pray. Thereafter, they walked off their jobs and then refused to report for work or call in for three consecutive days, which violated the company’s attendance policy. As a result, Cargill terminated their employment.
The discrimination charges were filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and revolve around an employer’s obligation under Title VII of the Federal Civil Rights Act to afford reasonable accommodation to the religious beliefs of their applicants and employees. Possible accommodations might include flexible scheduling, relaxed dress or grooming standards or granting unpaid time off for religious observance. Flexible scheduling to permit employees time to pray during the working day has frequently been identified as one such accommodation.
However, it is also clear under Title VII that accommodation need not be provided if it results in an undue hardship to the employer. Unlike the elevated threshold under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the standard for showing undue hardship for religious accommodation is rather minimal. The EEOC explains that hardship exists if there is more than a minimal cost or disruption to the business, and that hardship may be present “if a requested accommodation is costly, compromises workplace safety, decreases workplace efficiency, infringes on the rights of other employees, or requires other employees to do more than their share of potentially hazardous or burdensome work.”
Company Preaches Productivity
When this story was first reported, Cargill announced that there had not been any change in their approach to prayer breaks and that such breaks were allowed for small groups of workers. They added that accommodating larger groups who wanted to pray together was difficult because it interfered with its operations as a USDA-inspected plant that processes meat. They have not commented publicly since the charges were filed.
Cargill is not alone in finding themselves defending these claims. Employers across the country, in large and small communities, are struggling with how to accommodate the increasing diversity in the workforce while maintaining their businesses’ productivity. In many instances, workers feel dissatisfied with the efforts made to accommodate their religious needs while employers become frustrated in trying to meet ambitious production schedules without enough workers on the assembly line.
Unfortunately, there is no bright line rule for defining when an accommodation request is “reasonable.” While the threshold for proving hardship is relatively low, employers are still obligated to consider accommodation requests in good faith and in recognition that they must undertake some effort to find a workable solution.
The best way to start is with an interactive process with the affected employees to determine the precise contours of what they need. Effective compromise often results from a reasoned discussion of what the employees and employer need. After that, the employer should evaluate the impact of granting the accommodation. While mere inconvenience is not a sufficient basis for denial, a real impact in terms of cost, safety, production or morale probably will be
Bottom Line:
The EEOC charges were just filed so there may be a long wait before anything develops in this case. Still, this is a valuable reminder that with their increasingly diverse workforce, employers must listen to employees’ requests for religious accommodation and seek ways to grant those requests without burdening the business.
It may not be easy to satisfy both sides of the discussion, but a reasonable compromise is usually better than a pile of EEOC charges and possible litigation.