The latest employment law Case of the Week features the ultimate smackdown steel cage match of the millennium: religious accommodation vs. collective bargaining agreement (okay, maybe a bit of hyperbole). The Third Circuit recently addressed this issue in Fouche v. NJ Transit, and held that the winner (and still champion) was the collective bargaining agreement.
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Generally, an employer has an obligation to provide reasonable accommodations for the sincerely held religious beliefs of its employees - unless, the accommodation would impose an undue hardship on the employer. In religious accommodation cases, an "undue hardship" is defined as imposing more than a "de minimis" cost.
Here, the Third Circuit issued a short opinion affirming the trial court and holding that:
This accommodation would have placed an undue hardship on New Jersey Transit as Fouche's election not to drive on certain Sundays would have resulted in a breach of the seniority provision of the union's collective bargaining agreement, thus raising a legal issue.I think the bottom line here is that a religious accommodation that requires breaching a CBA probably constitutes an "undue hardship."
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