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When Safety & Religion Collide
Situation: A company requires workers to wear a hardhat when they’re in a construction zone. The safety rule is consistent with ANSI and CSA standards and required under OSHA laws. One of your workers belongs to the Sikh religion. It’s against his religion to remove his turban. And, because the hardhat can’t be worn over the turban, he refuses to obey the rule.
Question: Can you discipline him?
Answer: This is a hypothetical situation but it’s based on actual cases in both the U.S. and Canada. The short answer is that you’d have to make an effort to accommodate the worker’s religious preference. That could involve assigning him to a position where he wouldn’t have to wear a hardhat.
But what if that doesn’t work? What happens when it boils down to a choice between the worker’s religious rights and his safety? The answer might depend on whether anybody else’s safety is at risk:
If Other Workers Would Be Endangered: You could enforce the rule. In other words, the duty to accommodate religious preference doesn’t require you to knowingly put others at risk.
If Only the Worker’s Safety Would Be Endangered: This is a closer case. In all likelihood, you could still enforce the rule and wouldn’t have to stand by and let the worker expose himself to danger. But there’s a strong feeling among judges that the right of religious freedom is so important that a worker should be allowed to choose his religion over his personal safety as long as there’s no risk of anybody else’s getting hurt.
Conclusion
Laws aren’t just arbitrary rules and scrawlings in code books. They’re a reflection of a society’s values. Sometimes those values collide and force extremely difficult decisions. Workers who refuse to wear hardhats or shave beards for religious reasons is one of those occasions because it pits the individual’s religious freedom against the right of workers to a safe and healthy workplace.
Clearly, one person’s religious freedom can’t be allowed to compromise another’s safety. But the question of whether a worker can be deprived of the choice to put his religion ahead of his own safety and only his own safety is considerably more difficult.
Thus, for example, requiring a worker to shave to ensure a seal on a respirator might be justified if the individual is expected to play a key leadership role in the company’s evacuation plan. If the individual can’t perform this function because he’s overcome by noxious vapors, the entire workplace would be in danger. However, if the worker’s choice affects only his own safety and he knows the dangers, some judges might allow him to defy the safety measure and accept the risks.
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So would you have that person sign documenation that they are putting their religious beliefs over safety to cover any accident that could occur so he could not claim that on W/C or the company be fined by OSHA if they were audited?
Very great difficulty arises as now it is possible that employer is being pushed in to an area of decision making where he/she has no experience. What is to stop any employee from claiming that wearing of hard hat is contrary to religious beliefs.
Perhaps what employers need to realise is that in the example of the turban, there is in fact a more realistic solution. That is to get them to wear thee type used by sportsmen or even that used by jet fighter pilots and which fit under the helmet.
A few years ago, I ran into a similar situation while conducting a safety consultation for a client company who was a subcontractor at a construction site. Another subcontractor had provided a framing crew who were all Rastafarians. Because of their dreadlocks, they were unable to wear the required hardhats. The GC on the site worked with them and allowed them to remove the hardhat's suspension system. The employees then worked with their hair stuffed into the hardhats. I doubt they had very good protection, but I was not sure how I would have handled it if the employees were my responsibility.
How can one justify to the rest of the people that abide by our laws and requirements in the work force that a person can forego a hardhat or gets to be placed in another job because of their religious beliefs? If this is an acceptable arguement, then a person who started going bald at an early age (for example) and refuses to wear a hard hat should also be able to receive the same treatment. The later is pursuing his right of happiness and prosperity because he will be mentally satisfied that by not wearing a hard hat helps him keep his hair from falling out faster than it would by wearing it. (I actually had a person concerned over this at one place I worked). This is just one example of the pandora's box many can see in this scenario.
Personally, I do not think a person can be allowed that type of special treatment strictly because they refuse to remove the turbine. I also think it should be grounds for not hiring them to work in an environment that requires head protection, just as I would think it should be grounds to not hire a person to do electrical work who refuses to remove rings and possibly body piercings to prevent themselves from being electricuted around open panels, etc. By doing either of these you will undermine the safety culture and protective measures that too many companies and safety and health professionals have battled to put in place for TOO many years.
I am for religious freedoms and understand the importance of the personal rights of that person, but when it comes to protecting them, they must make the choice to follow the requirements or expect to lose there job, not be reassigned. Especially when others who would prefer to not follow the requirements have to face that choice without religious grounds.
Tough question for sure.
Respectfully submitted.
Clear job descriptions in the hiring policy would prevent the situation. "Must be capable of meeting all safety requirements of the job, including working with required safety equipment, including using a respirator if required."
If something like that is in the job description PRIOR to hiring, then this employee can be terminated (or not hired in the first place) for inability to meet job criteria: he cannot perform to the standards required for the job.
Judging by the title of the article, and the comments, the stakeholders are not of the Sikh religion or practiced in dealing with human rights issues.
Before making a decision, the health and safety professional should consult with the people who can offer an educated perspective.
There is information on OSHA's website about this. We had this situation as well and the individual was happy to sign a waiver indicating he understands the hazards. However, he would wear a small head covering under the turban in case he felt he needed to wear a hard hat (it was his choice). But according to OSHA's site, a company will not be cited as long as they inform the employee of the hazards and it is for religious purposes.
http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=DIRECTIVES&p_id=1789