Beka Foulkrod

Extra-Credit Article

March 9, 2020

This article presented the court case involving Gabriel Sanchez who was fired from his

position as a cable splicer; Gabriel caused several safety accidents, some of which brought

about injury to himself. Before being fired, he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress

disorder. Gabriel decided to sue the company he worked for claiming they were not acting in

accordance with the American’s with Disabilities Act. The court sided with the employer as

Gabriel was unable to perform the necessary job functions despite having accommodations.

The article emphasized having accurate and up-to-date job descriptions available is of upmost

importance to decide if an employee is able to carry out the daily job functions.

I always understood job descriptions as necessary documents used to determine if an

individual was qualified to be hired or to explain the nature of the job to a new employee. Once

created, I assumed they were tucked away in a file only to be glanced at when creating

interview questions. Based on this court case, I now understand that they are also important to

determine if an employee is fit to return to work or to evaluate if the individual is a safety

concern to the company. As an HR manager, it’s not only important to create an accurate job

description, but also make sure it is updated to reflect the changing nature of a job.
Beka Foulkrod

Extra-Credit Article

March 9, 2020

Seventh day Adventist, Edward Hedican, tried to sue Walmart after accepting an
assistant manager position and not being granted Saturday’s off to observe the Sabbath. His
manager said that in giving him the time off they would be down a manager each week. This
would cause not only a shortage in available customer service representatives but would also
drop sales for the day. In trying to accommodate, Edward’s manager offered him another
position in the store that would not require him to work on Saturday’s. It was my
understanding that this position did not pay as well. The courts favored Walmart’s decision
stating that the offer was a reasonable accommodation given the situation.
According to the EEOC, employers cannot discriminate, “against workers based on
religion and requires employers to reasonably accommodate an employee’s sincerely held
religious beliefs unless doing so would pose an undue hardship for the employer.” This
statement can be unclear as to what is considered a hardship. The article later stated that a
hardship is anything that, “is costly, compromises workplace safety, decreases workplace
efficiency, infringes on the rights of other employees, or requires other employees to do more
than their share of potentially hazardous or burdensome work.” I agree that their needs to be
laws in place to give both the employee and employer a voice in this situation, but I do not
understand how the confides of this particular law allow the employee to have any freedom.
For instance, I can’t imagine that the employee works seven days a week. Why couldn’t their
day off be on Saturday? As a future Human Resource Manager, what is acceptable level of
change reasonable to allow for accommodations? I feel as though giving the employee an
inequivalent position with less pay is more of a cop out to the situation.