A forum at the New America Foundation finds that discourse on workplace flexibility issues must include religious practices. As issues surrounding workplace flexibility continue to be part of a national discourse, employers and policymakers should include the needs of religious Americans as part of that debate, several speakers said April 8.

At a discussion sponsored by the New America Foundation, several speakers representing various religious communities, along with a workplace flexibility advocate, discussed past religious discrimination cases based on workers who were denied accommodations for their religious practices. The speakers emphasized that legislation and increased information would help alleviate some of the challenges those workers face.

Katie Corrigan, the co-director of Workplace Flexibility 2010, a public policy initiative based at Georgetown University Law Center, said that the White House Forum on Workplace Flexibility, held March 31, had brought to the fore issues surrounding the needs of working Americans for increased flexibility between work and commitments outside of work.

Although issues of work and religious observance had not been directly addressed at the forum, Corrigan said conflicts between work situations and religious practices were similarly practical challenges to other types of work-life conflicts. “Faith is part of the conversation” on flexibility, she said.

Religion as ‘Part of Identity.’

“People of faith should not be required to leave a part of their identity at the workplace door,” said Richard Foltin, the director of national and legislative affairs at the American Jewish Committee.

Although Congress in 1972 amended the 1964 Civil Rights Act to mandate that employers accommodate religious employees if it did not put an “undue hardship” on the employer, various court rulings have made that standard difficult to enforce, Foltin said.

“Where the force of law is not strong enough, many employers recognize the mutual benefit of finding a fit between the needs of the employer and the employee,” Foltin said. Still, he said that religious discrimination claims filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had increased significantly since the mid-1990s. Although it was difficult to tell how many of those claims were directly related to accommodations, it was likely that they made up a good portion of the total, Foltin said.

Foltin also said that although no bill had yet been introduced in the current Congress, lawmakers had in the past introduced the Workplace Religious Freedom Act, which he said would “provide a broad higher standard of protection to people who need accommodations in the workplace” for their religious practices by changing the interpretation of what constitutes an “undue hardship” for employers. The bill may again be introduced in the current Congress, Foltin said.

Meanwhile, Amardeep Singh, director of programs at the Sikh Coalition, highlighted issues faced by Muslim and Sikh workers who need to wear a turban or head scarf while on the job. He mentioned two instances, which he referred to as “back-of-the-bus cases,” in which employees of an airline and a rental car company were removed from public-facing customer service positions because of the religious articles they wore, and were put in other jobs with no public interaction but with their same pay and benefits.

‘Back-of-the-Bus’ Cases Unacceptable

Courts had ruled that such accommodations were acceptable, Singh said, but he argued that they were unacceptable since they labeled certain workers as “undesirable.” The point of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act was to be “integrative,” Singh said, and when courts interpret cases in this way, it undermines the intent of the law.

Nathan Diament, of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, emphasized the importance of information to issues of religion and workplace flexibility. “Many of the problems that are present come from a lack of information,” he said. For example, many people know about Passover seders that take place on the first and second nights of that holiday, but fewer people know that observant Jews also observe two days at the end of Passover, possibly requiring time off from work.

In addition to holy day observances, other issues that may arise include the need of employees to take small portions of a day to pray or take part in other religious observances, along with conscience issues for employees, such as those surrounding health care workers and abortion.

“On the government enforcement side, in the employer community, and among employees, there’s a lot more information that needs to get out and a lot more education that needs to go on,” Diament said.

The panel also included Zainab Al-Suwaij, executive director of the American Islamic Congress, who said that “by coming together to promote religious diversity in the U.S. we will offer an example to countries and societies around the world”; and Barry Bussey, director of legislative affairs at the General Conference of Seventh-Day Adventists, who said that in general, his experience has been that when employers have been willing to accommodate religious workers, there usually is a way to accommodate them in a mutually satisfactory way.

In summarizing the discussion, Corrigan emphasized that in discussing workplace flexibility, employers and policymakers should recognize that “diversity is the norm. It shouldn’t be a surprise that people have religious obligations, just as it shouldn’t be a surprise that people have family responsibilities,” she said.