Important Court Ruling for Sabbath Keepers

Somehow Bob Thiel missed some news that concerned a Living Church of God member which has implications for United Church of God members as well as all Sabbath keepers.

There was a fairly important case decided in the 4th circuit regarding the rights of Sabbath keepers in the workplace. This decision could be viewed as a setback. From Jonathan Turley

David Wise, a worker at a Firestone facility in North Carolina, will be forced to chose between his faith and his job under an important ruling from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. A member of the the Living Church of God, Wise is required to take a greater number of days off than most employees and sued when he was terminated for these practices as violative of his religious rights. The Court ruled against him and held that Firestone could refuse to accommodate such religious practices.

As a “lab floater,” Wise was able to work around his religious holidays until a restructuring in the company made it impossible. The Living Church of God has some pretty decent holidays, according to the court:

There’s one statement there from Turley I take issue with.

"Wise is required to take a greater number of days off than most employees." That’s not necessarily so. According to Suits in the Workplace he more than had the ability to cover his missed time with a combination of vacation days, personal time etc.

The company, which was operating under a collective bargaining agreement, had a fairly flexible time off policy including 15 vacation days, 3 floating holidays, the ability to swap shifts 8 times per year with another employee, and the ability to take 60 hours of unpaid leave for any reason.

The issue was not the amount of missed time but rather the change in terms of his employment made by his employer which required Sabbath work. There is no reason a conscientious employee who is a Sabbath and Holy Day keeper would miss any more time than anyone else, so long as accommodation is made for the Sabbath. Generally vacation time, working additional hours, flextime or some other arrangement is adequate to cover those periods. Granted, there may be some exceptions. In this specific case though there was plenty of time available.

The case appears to be that David Wise had been working under an arrangement satisfactory to both himself and Firestone, his employer. The company restructured and did away with his position. Since the company was subject to a union collective bargaining agreement it had no ability to deviate from its terms and it appears the union was unwilling to budge as well. Once again unions are no friends to Sabbath keepers. It’s quite possible his immediate supervisor would have been willing and able to make accommodation if not hamstrung by union rules.

This is a truly unfortunate case where someone takes a job in good faith and makes it work. The company has to restructure and due to collective bargaining is unable to make other arrangements for the employee. The union of course could have helped but they apparently refused.

This ruling is important in the broader sense because according to Turley it seems to narrow the law.

The opinion is an interesting statutory interpretation exercise, relying on plain meaning of the statute and congressional intent in the use of the word “reasonable.”


This may not be the end of it for Turley writes

It could be a ruling that is not only appealed to the Supreme Court but raised in Congress, where members have sought to demand accommodations for religious practices on various levels in the last ten years. This may put some members in a bind between religious right advocates and business interests in Congress

I have some previous posts on union obstructionism when it comes to Sabbath keepers. Here the letter carriers union is of no help and there is this situation at Lockheed Martin.

If you are a Sabbath keeper don’t expect help from your union. You may as well look for employment elsewhere.