Religious Differences Create Strife at Gold'n Plump, Dunkin' Donuts
Minnesota-based chicken producer Gold'n Plump Poultry last week settled two religious accommodation suits involving prayer times for its Muslim employees. And in an unrelated case, a Muslim Dunkin' Donuts franchisee is losing his store because he refuses to carry pork products.
The number of religious accommodation cases has skyrocketed over the last decade, and a great many of them have taken place in the food industry. The legal standard is that any company with 15 or more employees "must reasonably accommodate employees' sincerely held religious practices unless doing so would impose an undue hardship on the employer."
Of course, the standards for "reasonable accommodation" and "undue hardship" are up for debate, which winds up being precisely what companies and employees pay their lawyers to argue about.
In the Gold'n Plump case, the company agreed to offer an extra break during each shift to accommodate its large number of Muslim employees, mostly Somali immigrants. As Muslim prayer times shift daily based on the position of the sun, the break will move accordingly, though all employees will receive the same breaks whether they're Muslim or not.
The company will also pay $215,000 to settle with employees who said they were fired because of their requests for religious accommodation, plus $150,000 for another case involving Muslims who refused to sign a form consenting to work with pork products.
The Dunkin' Donuts case is a little different, as it involved a franchisee and not an employee. For years, Dunkin' Donuts had allowed a Chicago branch owned by an Arab-American to sell everything except pork products. In 2002, however, the donut chain decided all franchisees were required to carry all products, meaning the owner had to either change his policy or lose his store.
Since he was not an employee, the "reasonable accommodation" standard didn't apply, so he sued for racial discrimination, arguing that avoiding pork was part of his Arab culture. The case dragged on for years but in March, the courts ruled in favor of Dunkin' Donuts.
Other companies are averting lawsuits by addressing religious needs before employees get to the litigation level.
Target in 2007 responded quickly to religious accommodation requests from Muslim employees who didn't want to ring up bacon and other pork products. A growing number of companies are doing things like setting up Muslim prayer rooms and even producing employee head scarves in company colors -- not only to prevent lawsuits, but also to help the companies recruit and retain the best employees by making everyone feel comfortable.
According to Stewart Friedman, who directs the Wharton Work/Life Integration Project at the University of Pennsylvania, employees "who are better able to incorporate all the different parts of their lives are generally healthier and more energetic and focused."
Most religious accommodation cases involve the major religions -- Jewish employees wanting time off for the Sabbath, Muslims needing prayer breaks, employees seeking dress code exceptions for beards, yarmulkes, head scarves or religious crosses, etc. But the law acknowledges more obscure religions as well. A few years ago, Red Robin lost a case against an employee who wanted to wear visible tattoos in accordance with his Kemetic faith, which is based on the religion of ancient Egypt.
Costco won a similar case against a member of the Church of Body Modification, however. In that incident, Costco offered to let the employee keep her eyebrow piercing but cover it up while she was at work. The woman refused and sued the company, but the court ruled that Costco had offered a "reasonable accommodation" and was therefore off the hook.