The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has ruled that the U.S. Postal Service unfairly treated a Hasidic Jew by refusing him overtime opportunities because he did not want to work on the Sabbath or Jewish holidays.
The Postal Service, in refusing overtime to Jenoe Rottenberg of Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood, argued that its collective bargaining agreement required those seeking such work to be available whenever called.
But the EEOC rejected the service’s claim that the agreement overrode language in the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 requiring an employer to provide “reasonable accommodation” to religious observances “unless an undue hardship would result.”
Dennis Rapps, executive director of COLPA, the National Jewish Commission on Law and Public Affairs, which handled the case, said that five other Jews in the Postal Service contacted COLPA to complain about the overtime regulations.
While those five will benefit in the future, they will not be able to acquire more than one month’s overtime back pay because they never formally complained about the practice.
The commission decision, which follows an initial decision in Rottenberg’s favor this past January, requires him to be allowed to place his name on the overtime list and be paid back pay and interest for missed overtime opportunities.
Such pay, retroactive to May 29, 1987, when Rottenberg filed the discrimination complaint, amounts to “thousands of dollars,” Rapps said.
Rapps said the Postal Service case was unusual since it is one of the few government agencies that operates 24 hours a day and there-fore provides many overtime opportunities.
LEGISLATIVE REMEDY SOUGHT
On another front, COLPA is trying to gain legislative approval in New York state of a law requiring employers to allow employees the right to make up work lost for religious observance.
The legislation is needed to effectively reverse the Supreme Court’s 1986 ruling in Ansonia Board of Education vs. Philbrook, in which it ruled against a high school teacher who wanted six days off each year for religious holidays.
The teacher, an adherent to the Worldwide Church of God, was allowed three paid days off and took the other three days without pay.
Rapps said such a bill has been introduced a few times in the New York State Assembly in recent years, most recently by Assemblyman Sheldon Silver, a Manhattan Democrat.
Rep. Stephen Solarz (D-N.Y.) has introduced a related bill in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
