Comments on: Employee claims disability caused poor performance: What now? http://www.hrlegalnews.com/employee-claims-disability-caused-poor-performance-what-now/ Up-to-the-minute cases and law impacting HR Fri, 17 Jul 2009 14:01:31 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=abc By: Grace Wilson http://www.hrlegalnews.com/employee-claims-disability-caused-poor-performance-what-now/comment-page-1/#comment-1566 Grace Wilson Mon, 29 Sep 2008 17:11:56 +0000 http://www.hrlegalnews.com/?p=262#comment-1566 "For some positions, coming to work on time might be an “essential function” of the job– for example, if employees do shift work that requires them to be present at specific times and being late means other employees have to take on a significant burden by doing extra work. In those cases, an employee who’s chronically late can’t perform the job’s essential functions." I have a scenario very similar to this, the company is claiming that by allowing the employee to change their start times would cause an inconvenience to the customer and undue burden on other employees. The position involved is a project management position to government agencies (customers). The problem I have with this is the company has a full-time support person to take calls which are only routed to the project manager if they are unable to answer the question/issue. Secondly, many of these customers are in different time zones, so they are already "waiting" for their calls to be taken. Although providing support is clearly defined as one of the "essential" job functions of this position, the other procedures mentioned above seem to me to make the companies assertion that allowing this particular disabled employee to change their start time an "undue hardship" on the company complete bunk, and they are opening themselves up for EEOC discipline and sanctions, not to mention discrimination. Opinions? “For some positions, coming to work on time might be an “essential function” of the job– for example, if employees do shift work that requires them to be present at specific times and being late means other employees have to take on a significant burden by doing extra work. In those cases, an employee who’s chronically late can’t perform the job’s essential functions.”

I have a scenario very similar to this, the company is claiming that by allowing the employee to change their start times would cause an inconvenience to the customer and undue burden on other employees. The position involved is a project management position to government agencies (customers).

The problem I have with this is the company has a full-time support person to take calls which are only routed to the project manager if they are unable to answer the question/issue. Secondly, many of these customers are in different time zones, so they are already “waiting” for their calls to be taken.

Although providing support is clearly defined as one of the “essential” job functions of this position, the other procedures mentioned above seem to me to make the companies assertion that allowing this particular disabled employee to change their start time an “undue hardship” on the company complete bunk, and they are opening themselves up for EEOC discipline and sanctions, not to mention discrimination.

Opinions?

]]> By: Larry http://www.hrlegalnews.com/employee-claims-disability-caused-poor-performance-what-now/comment-page-1/#comment-1408 Larry Wed, 17 Sep 2008 17:28:10 +0000 http://www.hrlegalnews.com/?p=262#comment-1408 The victimization of America marches on. The victimization of America marches on.

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