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Employers Must Accommodate Workers’ Religious Practices

December 5, 1972
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Employers must make “reasonable accommodation” to employes’ religious practices, State Human Rights Commissioner Jack M. Sable stated in a discussion last night on WOR-TV’s “Right Now!”

Referring to the State law barring “discriminatory” treatment of employes for religious reasons, Sable pointed out that “In implementation of this enactment I recently issued a reminder to employers that with the change to Standard Time they have to permit ‘Sabbath observers’–principally Orthodox Jews and Seventh-day Adventists, who observe their Sabbath from sundown Friday to darkness on Saturday–to leave their work on Fridays in sufficient time to arrive home before sundown.”

The only exception, Sable noted, is when an employer can prove that such dispensation will cause him “undue hardship.” Joining Sable in the half-hour discussion were three representatives of the National Jewish Commission on Law and Public Affairs (COLPA)–vice-president Sidney Kwestel, secretary Howard Zuckerman and founder Marcel Weber.

A nation-wide drive in Israel to collect signatures for a petition protesting the Soviet head tax has not only the broad support of Israelis but also many Arabs from Israel and the West Bank, according to Hadassah. Recently two Arab patients from Amman at the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center in Jerusalem insisted on signing the petitions which were circulated in the hospital by volunteers.

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