EEOC REMINDER ABOUT LEAVE AND REASONABLE ACCOMMODATIONS

Given the increasing number of requests for reasonable accommodations, union reps need to remember the following EEOC precedent: “forcing an employee to take leave when another accommodation would permit an employee to continue working is not an effective accommodation….absent undue hardship, an agency should provide reasonable accommodations that permit an employee to keep working rather than choosing to put the employee on leave.” This issue came up again last month when an employee needed to eat a small snack each time she took some medicine during the day.  The agency told her to just use leave, but EEOC reversed it giving her work time to snack because the agency could not prove that created an undue hardship. Check out Denese G. v. Dep’t of the Treasury, EEOC No. 0120141118 (Dec. 29, 2016) for details.