Examples Of Constructive Discharge

783 Words4 Pages
To: Chief Executive Officer From: Bruno Mars, Elementary Division Manager As you are aware we have had a claim filed against our company under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Our former employee is stating that our new work schedules of four days on and four days off is discriminatory because it requires employees to work on religious holy days and therefore is constructive discharge. I want to first discuss what constructive discharge actually is and why it is relevant to this situation. Constructive discharge occurs when an employer’s actions make the workplace so unacceptable that any reasonable employee would have found it necessary to quit if they were facing the same scenario. The Civil Rights Act of 1964…show more content…
From a legal perspective I believe that there are several court cases that support our legal position. The first one in the Supreme Court ruling in the case of Trans World Airlines vs. Hardison et al., 1977 that stated that an employer does not have to provide days off to employees to respect their religious holidays if it creates an undue hardship on the employer. The concern for our company is would the court consider a schedule request and undue hardship in this case. A second case that seems at face value to back our position is Grube vs. Lau Industries, 2001. In this case the court ruled that changing an employee’s work hours does not constitute constructive discharge under Title VII. In this case we have to determine if the employee ever asked us for a schedule accommodation. The opinion of the court may differ from this case if our employee had brought this concern to our attention and we did not offer an accommodation. Looking further into Title VII an employer may be guilty of discriminating against religious beliefs or practices unless a reasonable accommodation could be reached without undue hardship on our business. If the employee were to pursue a prima facie case they would have to prove three things to win in court: they have a bona fide religious belief that is in conflict…show more content…
First, we need to carefully examine our new production scheduling process and determine if there are ways to be more flexible with our employees to increase their work/life balance and raise our retention rates. It seems off base to me to enforce a schedule based on production needs that could decrease our employee retention rate, morale and ultimately slow production. Secondly, we need to elicit employee feedback to the pros and cons of the new schedule and ask our employees and front line managers for their input on how to improve the scheduling process as well as maximizing production. Next, we need to look at our entire staff and determine if some of our office teams that still work Monday through Friday, would be more interested in working the four on/four off production schedule. In this case we would have an opportunity to cross train some employees and make our workforce more flexible, as well as take care of our employees needs with inter-company transfers into positions that would provide them with a better work/life balance. I would also suggest that we schedule some manager training that would cover Title VII of the Civil Rights Act to insure that all of our practices are legally grounded and morally sound. Lastly, I would suggest bringing our former employee back to the company and finding a way to accommodate his religious beliefs. In
Open Document