Prayer break on Friday

[justalayman]

No because he is not objecting to the working hours. It’s just that he’s seeking an accommodation for his religious practices.


If your business does not have a regular go to lawyer that you can speak to about this, you need to hire one if you hope to do anything about the situation. He got ya and probably did so knowing how precarious of a position this puts you on.

This is only a start of the voluminous reading you should enage in;

https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/religion.cfm



This is likely your best direction for a defense if you choose to not allow him all this time off he is requesting;

Accommodation & Undue Hardship
An employer does not have to accommodate an employee's religious beliefs or practices if doing so would cause undue hardship to the employer. An accommodation may cause undue hardship if it 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.

 

[justalayman]

I did not think about making up the hours on weekends, that might be an option unless they already staff for weekends.

Electricians, for the largest part, do not work regularly on weekends. In the construction industry a standard work week is m-f starting between 6-7 and ending around 2:30-3:30

In a service electrician position, there is often an “on call” electrician but most shops don’t have a regular staff on weekends. Most industrial customers work the typical m-f routine and many commercial customers (retail stores fall in this catagory) don’t want an elctrician there on the weekends unless it’s an urgent situation.

Residential customers tend to not like people coming over on the weekends either unless it is urgent.

So, there is a good likelihood there is no weekend work to be made available for the guy.

 

[justalayman]

It seems to me that one potential "reasonable accommodation" could be to offer to be flexible, and agree to allow him some extra time (that he would make up by working late) but only when he is working on job sites that are within X minutes (hypothetically 15) expected commuting time of the mosque. In those circumstances, including the hour that he'd otherwise get for lunch and the 15 minutes each way round trip, he'd only be off work for an extra 30 minutes, which presumably would not be disruptive and which he could make up that day or the next. However, when he will be working on a job site 45 minutes away from the mosque, as a round trip would take an 90 minutes, plus the hour for lunch if 2-1/2 hours would be highly disruptive to the needs of the business, he would not be able to take off.

Way too confusing and arbitrary.


I would suggest working him m-t 8 hours and 4 on Friday, if that is conducive to the employers needs. It remedies all this travel time issue and allows the guy to go to services as requested and it sets a regular schedule for the guy.

 

[LdiJ]

Electricians, for the largest part, do not work regularly on weekends. In the construction industry a standard work week is m-f starting between 6-7 and ending around 2:30-3:30

In a service electrician position, there is often an “on call” electrician but most shops don’t have a regular staff on weekends. Most industrial customers work the typical m-f routine and many commercial customers (retail stores fall in this catagory) don’t want an elctrician there on the weekends unless it’s an urgent situation.

Residential customers tend to not like people coming over on the weekends either unless it is urgent.

So, there is a good likelihood there is no weekend work to be made available for the guy.

I would think that some residential customers would be happy to be able to schedule work on a Saturday. I know that I would be one of them. I would also think that commercial customers who are normally only open Mon-Fri would also prefer to have electrical work done on Saturday in many cases.

However, you have a valid point that the OP's company may not schedule weekend work, and if they do not, then that idea would not be helpful.

If that is the case, that sends me back to them offering him a shortened work week, with applicable pay, in order to accommodate him.