HUMAN RESOURCE TASK 1
Memo
To: CEO
Date: 08/01/2013
Re: Lawsuit claim by a former Employee
A. CONSTRUCTIVE DISCHARGE
A former employee has recently brought a lawsuit against the company claiming a constructive discharge. He/she claims the company has religiously discriminated against him/her and was asked to work during days which his/her religion considers as a holy day which has forced him/her to quit the job because the company has made his/her working conditions unbearable. This memo is to give you updates on my findings and recommendations on the former employee’s lawsuit case filed against the company under Title VII of the Civil Right Act of 1964.
The legal concept is relevant to the scenario in such a way that the former employee claims he/she quit the job based on his alleged company’s religious discrimination. The employee is alleging that the discrimination was due to the new policy, shift work which the company introduced on the production employees. As a result of the growth of the company, there is nothing the company could have done than to introduce shift work for the production employees and to add more hours to employees to adsorb the growth process. Since the former employee is alleging a claim of discrimination, It now depends on the former employee to prove his/her claims, whether or not he/she had ever brought to the notice of the company’s management about his/ her religious rights, and must prove the effects of the shift work on his/her religious holy day, and whether the former employee’s complaints reached the desk of the CEO or the Human Resource manager and it was abandoned or nothing was done about it. If the former employee is able to provide any proof about his/her alleged discrimination which shows that the shift work introduced on the production employees was actually making his working conditions in the company unbearable, then constructive discharge would be relevant as a legal concept for this scenario and the former employee could possibly file a lawsuit against the company.
B. TITLE VII
According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Title VII of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 makes it clear that it is illegal to discriminate against employees or someone on grounds of color, religion, race, sex, or national origin. Gomez-Mejia, L., Balkin, D., & Cardy, R. (2009). In addition, it is required by law that religious practices held by employees are accommodated by employers reasonably unless it would bring onto the company undue hardship. By the Title VII, the religious issues relate to our current situation of which the former employee alleged the denial of his/her religious holy day.
In Title V of the United States Code, Sec. 5550a congress enacted a law which is to ensure that employers give time off to employees’ to allow them observe their religious rights. The law also requires that the employees have the opportunity to work overtime for the time off for their religious practices. If the company’s shift work schedule had conflicted with the former employees religious rights or holy days, it was important that he/she notify the supervisors so that his/her schedule could be modified in order not to conflict with his religious holy days. But there is no proof of complaints submitted by the former employee to the company regarding his/her alleged discrimination.
Also, in relation to this scenario under the Title VII SEC. 704, it is an unlawful employment practice for any employer or labor organization to discriminate against any of his employees’ base on him to have opposed any practice or file a charge against the employer. In addition, SEC. 705 of the Title VII created a Commission which is known as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission which will intervene in prevention of unlawful employment practices or any civil action which will be brought by an aggrieved person or party that violates the Title VII. Since the charges are on bases of religion in