MEMORANDUM
To: CEO
From: Elementary Division Manager
Date: 30th August, 2012
Subject: Response to the Employee’s Claim
As the company is growing with a remarkable pace, the production schedule of the company has been modified and it has been affected from the onset of the New Year. According to the new production schedule, the employees work time has been revised. Now they need to work on different times than the previous time of the usual schedule. The employees which are related to the production related operations have to work for around twelve hours on the 4 days of the week and for them the next four days were holidays. Also the time table of the office staff has been revised. Now they need to work from 8 AM to 5 PM in the weekdays. And the weekends will be off for them. According to the employee who had filed the case against the company has stated that the firm is discriminating on the base of the religion and they need to bring modification in it. The firm is trying to compel the employees to come and work on the religious days too if it comes in between those four days of the production work which is not correct on their part and they need to bring modification to holidays in case of religious occasions.
The Civil Rights Act was enacted in the year 1964 and hence known as the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It has several chapters which are related to various aspects of the rights that are provided to the citizens. The aspects range from the basic rights to the rights they can exercise against the employers during the job and hence it can be said to be a legal documental form of the laws which tends to remind all of the citizens their rights. According to the Chapter VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it will be against the law in the part of the employers to subject the employees to any kind of discrimination which is related to the color, sex, caste, religion etc. (Title VII, Civil Rights Act of 1964) The management of the firm need to follow the laws of the equal employment opportunity laws in order to ensure the proper and appropriate protection of the staff or the employees as well as the managers of the firm.
In the current situation in this toy company, the employee is taking the advantage of the laws or the amendments which are present in the VII chapter of the Civil Right Act of 1964 and with this he is blaming the firm that the company is discriminating the employees on the basis of the religion. The company must form some type of strategy in order to defend itself in the court proceedings or it may also try to defend by settling the decisions outside the court. The employee has also given reference of the constructive discharge which may be explained as the indirect way applied by the firms to make the employee resign by torturing them mentally or by harassing them within the firm on the basis of some specific or some generic but particular trait. (Kuhn, 2005, p. 210)The trait that the employee is discussing about is the religion and he is alleging that the new production scheduling will make them to work on their religious holidays. In the given case, the criteria of the constructive discharge might be applied as the employee had given his resignation from the company due to the harassment and the torture that he was facing in the firm from quite a time before the resigning.
Now the company needs to take effective stages in order to ensure that the case is settled without doing much damage to the image and the property of the firm. The company can take this into its positive point in front of the court that the revision of the production schedule was done keeping in mind the growth and the company and a bonus as per the growth is being awarded to the employees every year a and also the schedule has been made compulsory for all the employees on rotation basis and irrespective of which religion they are. They need to work for 12 hours for 4 days after which they will get a leave of 4 days and this has no been made compulsory to any select employee instead it is mandated for every employee. So, the firm can put forward the point that it is following the equal employment opportunities provided by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it should be exempted from this case.
The firm should think about some strategies to defend the employee’s allegation of constructive discharge by following some more notes of the same foundation Act i.e. Civil Rights Act 1964 (hap Vii). In the same time it should try to settle the allegation and ultimately the case by talking with the employee outside the case and providing him some perks or benefits in return of his withdrawal of the case. The firm should try to persuade him that it was for the betterment of the company and was not any kind of discrimination. Simultaneously of the first hand, the firm should try to use the amendments of Equal Opportunity laws to defend themselves by saying that te revised schedule was necessary for the growth of the company and it was not direct for any specific employee, it was for all the employees present. (Kleiner, 2000, p. 55) The firm can quote previous instances that it was never related with any sort of discrimination activities. This way, it can defend the case in a better manner. References
John A. Pearce II, Dennis R. Kuhn, Samuel A. DiLullo, (2005) "U.S. employers’ legal responsibilities for preventing religious discrimination", Managerial Law, Vol. 47 Iss: 1/2, pp.208 – 2224
Steven Fritz, Brian H. Kleiner, (2000) "EEOC guidelines that employers should know", Equal Opportunities International, Vol. 19 Iss: 6/7, pp.53 – 57
Legal References
Carder v. Cont'l Airlines, Inc., 636 F.3d 172 (March 22, 2011)
Kasten v. Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics Corp., 2011 U.S. LEXIS 2417 (Mar. 22, 2011)
Staub v. Proctor Hosp., 560 F.3d 647 (7th Cir. Ill., 2009)