We ALL need to be against 24/7/365 “on call”. I did it for 10 years. It not only sucks, but I’m confident hurt my overall productivity. If it’s not important enough to hire a backup or two, it’s simply not important.
One of the advantages of getting older is that you develop some perspective on crap like this. I never check work email at night or on weekends anymore. And I just tell people "no" when they ask me to do work stuff on a weekend. The world continues to turn.
What I can't reconcile is the prevalence of this type of abuse (along with many other types of abuse) when we're supposedly hard to find, hard to replace and hard to retain. I don't expect the rock star treatment, but there are a lot of positions that are MUCH easier to find people to fill who are treated with a lot more respect or, failing that, at least not with utter contempt.
You guys should come to New Zealand... working outside of your work hours is not cool here. More and more companies expect only 37 hours per week... a new trend is 4 days workweeks.
Nobody checking their email or phone after work... Ridiculous.
yeah. totally agree. i call bullshit on being available 24/7/365 when you're the only person doing the job. even if you ignore the implications this has on you, this is a terrible idea if only from the redundancy/keeping the lights on kind-of perspective where if you quit you're left with 0 people doing an "important" job.
Nothing like having to break away from a dinner with your family and switch your brain into work mode. Honestly, the worst things about this industry is everything they do to ensure you have no personal life outside of work.
Being a backend engineer with occasional on-call responsibilities, this is an unfortunate reality I've had to deal with.
My religious tradition (reformed evangelical christian) takes the sabbath pretty seriously, as stated in the Westminster Confession of Faith:
> VIII. This Sabbath is to be kept holy unto the Lord when men, after a due preparing of their hearts, and ordering of their common affairs beforehand, do not only observe an holy rest all the day from their own works, words, and thoughts about their worldly employments and recreations, but also are taken up the whole time in the public and private exercises of his worship, and in the duties of necessity and mercy.
Notice the last statement makes an allowance for acts of mercy and duties of necessity, which would certainly include things like being a Doctor or a Policeman, but I've always considered my duties as a Software Engineer being on-call to be borderline on whether or not they meet that standard. Certainly my employer(s) have thought they were necessary... But who are we kidding. Most of this stuff isn't life or death and waiting till Monday to get it fixed probably wouldn't be that big of a deal.
(I should probably mention that although these are the standards of the Church I attend they're rarely enforced in any meaningful sense - being treated more as a matter of personal conscience than of discipline... and particularly when it comes to the Sabbath)
Still I wrestle with it... not having a firm enough conviction to quit a job where I've had to do it, though if it were an every week thing, particularly if I had to regularly miss the Sunday service, I almost certainly would.
If I could make one plea, it would be for tolerance and compromise. I realize religious beliefs can be pretty weird in this day and age, but they're often sincerely held, and there's usually a solution available if the company is willing to consider it. (for example I'm just fine being on-call any other day of the week, and a surprising oddity of the reformed tradition, we don't really have religious holidays: https://heidelblog.net/2017/03/the-westminster-divines-on-ho...)
Isn’t there some sort of religious discrimination potential if your employer refuses to accommodate a limited concession that doesn’t preclude you fulfilling your duties?
having on call responsibilities and being available 24/7 are significantly different. On call is a structured rotation that is usually explicitly part of a job description.
I guess you'll have to be in such a situation to find out. I have an ancestor who moved to America as an Orthodox Jew in the early 1900s. He would find work on Monday, and work until Friday. If the employer wouldn't let him take Saturday off, then he would quit and look for a new job. This cycle eventually stopped when he got hired by a seventh day Adventist.
The article says he claims he was fired based on his religion, but it doesn't sound like it was related to religion. It just so happened it was a religious holiday. Maybe there is more to the story, but it sounds like he could just as well have been golfing.
Either way, Yelp sounds absolutely toxic if they required him to be available like that. Expecting anyone to be available 24/7/365 is absurd. Set up an on-call rotation. Establish escalation chains. Designate backups. These are basic procedures. If this guy was so critical that there was no-one else in the company that could do whatever it was, hire someone else.
Companies have an obligation to make reasonable accommodations of employee's religions. Not expecting them to be available during major religious holidays is well within the bounds of reasonable accommodations. In addition, unless there is more to the story, it doesn't seem believable that someone acting in good faith wouldn't be able to work something out; I mean Christianity only has two major holidays.
This is excluding extreme cases like if someone claimed that their religion has dozens of major holidays a year. To my knowledge, no major religion does that.
It's not that he was fired directly "because he was religious", exactly; it's about whether Yelp discriminated against him by violating the following (from https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/religion.cfm):
> The law requires an employer or other covered entity to reasonably accommodate an employee's religious beliefs or practices, unless doing so would cause more than a minimal burden on the operations of the employer's business. This means an employer may be required to make reasonable adjustments to the work environment that will allow an employee to practice his or her religion.
IANAL, but I believe there is a difference between a person being unavailable due to golfing vs. due to a religious belief, since a person's religious belief is a protected category whereas their sporting activities are not. If it was company policy to shave one's head, but an employee's religion prohibited them from doing so, the company would be discriminating against that person even if they required everyone to shave their heads (caveat: assuming a shaved head was not actually important to the employer's business). Otherwise, a company could "uniformly" apply a rule that "just so happens" to only apply to a specific religion (or gender, or any other protected category), and use that to effectively ban those who fall under that category.
Now, in this specific case, I don't know if he'll be able to show that supporting his beliefs wouldn't have caused Yelp "more than a minimal burden", but I think that's what he's going after.
"Lee also told Weathers, who is pursuing a degree in ministry leadership and has a severely autistic son, that he didn’t care about Weathers’ religious holidays or children, the suit claimed."
I could understand a coverage rotation, but having to be available 24/7/365 is basically being treated as a slave. He might not win his case - and unless his attorney is working on a percentage of a win - he should get a second opinion.
For his own health and well being as a family, he needs to find new employment. Find a job with a more reasonable work/life balance and adapt lifestyle choices to fit the budget.
I know a chaplain that has been at the bedside of many people during their final hours. None ever thought that they should have spent more time at the office.
10. Can my employer prevent me from taking off on religious holidays or my day of worship?
You should start by letting your employer know that there is a conflict between your religious observances and your work schedule. When your employer's workplace policies interfere with your religious practices, you can ask for what is called a "reasonable accommodation": a change in a workplace rule or policy which would allow you to engage in a religious practice without conflicting with your work obligations.
Your employer is required to provide you with such an accommodation unless it would impose an "undue hardship" on the employer's business, defined as an accommodation that is too costly or difficult to provide. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) who oversees these types of claims, has interpreted an undue hardship to mean anything more than regular administrative costs, anything that reduces workplace efficiency or impairs workplace safety, anything infringing on other employees' job rights or causes those said employees' to carry the accommodated employee's share of burdensome work, or if the proposed accommodation conflicts with another law or regulation. Thus, employers are obligated to try in good faith to resolve the religious conflict, or identify an actual monetary or administrative expense. It is important for you to work closely with your employer to find an appropriate accommodation.
If the accommodation would impose a burden on the employer that cannot be resolved, the employer is not required to allow the accommodation. Many accommodations, however, do not require any monetary or administrative burdens. Whether your employer can accommodate your religious practices will depend upon the nature of the work and the workplace. Usually, your employer can allow you to use lunch or other break times for religious prayer. If you require additional time for prayer, your employer can require you to make up the time.
Employers must give time off for the Sabbath or holy days except in an emergency, unless the employee works in key health and safety occupations or the employee's presence is critical to the company on any given day. This time off does not have to be paid, however. If employees don't come to work, employers may give them leave without pay, may require the amount of time to be made up, or may allow the employee to charge the time against any other leave with pay, except sick pay.
Yes, the real problem is that Yelp was attempting to prohibit the guy from doing anything else outside of work without even paying him for it! Unfortunately this is no longer even illegal, as overtime laws were destroyed through the "exempt" loophole. So he is (we are) left grasping at straws for something specific that was illegal to have prohibited rather than expecting congress would actually do anything for workers and address the general problem.
I agree with you. That said, this case is likely just forcing a payout. While Yelp would be unlikely to lose the case, even if he did say all the crap the former employee claimed, they certainly don't want this as national news for several months while it makes its way through the courts.
My first thought as well. The religious aspect of the issue should be irrelevant. Expecting your employees to be available at all times is absurd regardless of belief and shouldn't need any religious defence.
As it happens, this particular incident does appear to have a religious-observance aspect. It is also the case, however, that religious observances have specific protections in US law (stemming from the 1st. Amendment), making this aspect of the incident particularly suitable for making a case against the employer. If this is so, then, regardless of whether one is particularly religious, one should reflect on the implication that demanding 24/7/375 fealty is not regarded, prima facie, as abuse.
If the lawsuit fails he could always create a employer review site, post a bunch of negative reviews of Yelp, and then offer to remove the offending reviews if they purchase an annual subscription.
We should all spend a moment to really take in the fact that Yelp is a website that has reviews of restaraunts and other services. That this person needed to be on call 24/7 for a review website.
Not a hospital. Nothing was burning down. Not even transportation or infrastructure related.
> On Good Friday last March, Weathers’ boss, head of security Rick Lee, sent him an email about an employee in Yelp’s Phoenix offices seeking after-hours access to a building, the suit said.
Expecting employees to respond to non-emergencies off hours is an excellent way to get them to become less responsive.
What did his job description say? Did it clearly specify having to be on call 24/7/365. That would be key especially for a position that seems to require that kind of response.
Otherwise this is a bit like "unlimited vacation". Yes you can take it, but you never know when they'll come back and say "looks like you're not applying your full potential, so we're gonna go ahead an put you on probation".
> Lee also told Weathers [...] that he didn’t care about Weathers’ religious holidays or children, the suit claimed.
I think this is mostly about naming and shaming. As the lawsuit could involve a discovery phase, Yelp might want to settle to avoid revealing to the whole world their management "culture".
The headline is at least somewhat misleading. The plaintiff did not work in software, they seemed to have worked in physical security. It sucks that there was work to be done on a major religious holiday, but it seems reasonable to me that there's an expectation you are 'on-call' outside of normal work hours for a role like that. I'd really like to know what the job expectation was going in.
Forgetting the merits of the suit for a minute, if Yelp really needed 24/7 access, why not hire another security manager to work nights? If his job is so mission critical do you really want to risk him not being able to wake up at 3am in the morning from a phonecall?
Is it really religious discrimination though? It's pretty clear that the plaintiff's boss didn't care why he was incommunicado, only that he was. It doesn't appear that he displayed any religious hostility or intolerance, the outcome would have been the same if the employee was an atheist who decided to spend time with his family on a Sunday.
You're correct that any employee who decided to not answer their phone for a period might attract the same displeasure, but we have laws in the US that protect people who are observing religious holidays and he was, in fact, observing one. I guess Yelp could argue that his observation was unreasonably extreme, but that seems unlikely to pass muster.
If this person was observant Orthodox Jewish, and you expected them to be available on Shabbat, it'd be a clear violation of religious freedom - I don't see why a particularly religious Christian shouldn't get the same exemption. It's not reasonable to expect someone to be available 24/7 unless they were on call for this particular spell, as part of a rotation.
Just because he was fired for trying to take Christian holidays, doesn't make it anything but religious discrimination. Forcing a Jew to work on Yom Kippur or a Muslim on Eid would be the same.
Yelp's legal obligations are more complicated than "treat everyone the same." The Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires employers to make reasonable accommodations of employees' religions.
The language from Yelp pretty much spells out their case:
> "Yelp respects religious and personal responsibilities and makes reasonable accommodations when requested" (emphasis added)
I haven't read any court papers. My guess is their defense will hinge on them trying to prove the plaintiff didn't adequate accommodations.
Doesn't pass the smell test if you ask me. If it's important enough to fire somebody over, it's important enough to have a clear escalation strategy in case one person isn't available.
No comment on the merits of the case, but the headline is really hiding the ball. Instead of "Manager" they should say "Man Tasked With Granting Out-Of-Hours-Access to Office".
I.e. this wasn't just some random manager, but evidently someone they needed to be available to grant out of hours access to their offices.
True 24/7 can be really disruptive. I've had consulting gigs where some people would rather call me at 3AM then talk with the person next to them in the Ops room. Irritating as all can be, having a sleep schedule disrupted. Same customer ended up having you come in for a normal work day, cater supper, have you do evening deployments/change control/bug fix, then the late night/early AM stuff on prod would start till 5/6AM. You could possibly grab a couple hours of sleep before starting the 'normal' next day - but it was easier to just pound through a 32 hour day and then collapse on the airplane home. Nothing productive happened from those long days. Just like water skiing, more and more mistakes happen the longer a person is at it.
Posts like this make me want to remind people that there ARE good places to work. If you’re stuck in this kind of BS, there ARE alternatives. Just like relationships, there are many job fish in the sea, so don’t get discouraged, just find a way out.
The problem is finding them. The job search sites are trash as far as being a competent mediator to make the hiring process smoother. And companies are way too standoffish to hire quickly. It's a frustrating process.
We can thank labor unions for the concept of weekends and the 8-hour workday. The decline in labor union participation tracks with the erosion of the benefits our predecessors fought so hard for.
I am the manager of a decent sized R&D org in a company on the order of Yelp’s size and not only do I find this inexcusable on Yelp’s part, but where I work we would put the firing manager into a training/coaching program to sensitize him to the work life balance needs of his team. If he refused he would probably be removed as a manager and perhaps shown the door.
I work for large adtech company in France and out here oncall is paid (even if you’re not called) and we never intrude on personal time unless there is a major disaster, and even then there are almost always enough folks being paid to handle the oncall event to take care of things.
We do have R&D offices in the US and I don’t know the specifics of HR policy wrt oncall there, but everyone rolls up to the French HQ so I know it remains human-first.
I take the approach of telling people to call or text me if something is urgent (my number is in the company directory), because I likely won't notice an email quickly, and will ignore Slack/IM completely so soon as I walk out the door. The only time my phone buzzes is when something is actually on fire.
I remember previous jobs where late night emails demanding edits to someone's slide deck were routine (and anything is not urgent, it is editing some product manager's slide deck). That shit can wait until Monday, and if you are throwing it on me because you procrastinated, that's your problem.
[+] [-] frankwiles|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ams6110|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] commandlinefan|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vmware505|7 years ago|reply
Nobody checking their email or phone after work... Ridiculous.
[+] [-] mirceal|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] president|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yeOldenWhiner|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] cdoxsey|7 years ago|reply
My religious tradition (reformed evangelical christian) takes the sabbath pretty seriously, as stated in the Westminster Confession of Faith:
> VIII. This Sabbath is to be kept holy unto the Lord when men, after a due preparing of their hearts, and ordering of their common affairs beforehand, do not only observe an holy rest all the day from their own works, words, and thoughts about their worldly employments and recreations, but also are taken up the whole time in the public and private exercises of his worship, and in the duties of necessity and mercy.
Notice the last statement makes an allowance for acts of mercy and duties of necessity, which would certainly include things like being a Doctor or a Policeman, but I've always considered my duties as a Software Engineer being on-call to be borderline on whether or not they meet that standard. Certainly my employer(s) have thought they were necessary... But who are we kidding. Most of this stuff isn't life or death and waiting till Monday to get it fixed probably wouldn't be that big of a deal.
(I should probably mention that although these are the standards of the Church I attend they're rarely enforced in any meaningful sense - being treated more as a matter of personal conscience than of discipline... and particularly when it comes to the Sabbath)
Still I wrestle with it... not having a firm enough conviction to quit a job where I've had to do it, though if it were an every week thing, particularly if I had to regularly miss the Sunday service, I almost certainly would.
If I could make one plea, it would be for tolerance and compromise. I realize religious beliefs can be pretty weird in this day and age, but they're often sincerely held, and there's usually a solution available if the company is willing to consider it. (for example I'm just fine being on-call any other day of the week, and a surprising oddity of the reformed tradition, we don't really have religious holidays: https://heidelblog.net/2017/03/the-westminster-divines-on-ho...)
[+] [-] whiddershins|7 years ago|reply
Or some such?
[+] [-] jtmcmc|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sublupo|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmarreck|7 years ago|reply
The thing is, what if I claimed membership in a religion that only allowed me to work 3 days a week? ;)
[+] [-] daveFNbuck|7 years ago|reply
Your church sometimes enforces its rules about what you do outside of church in a meaningful sense? How does that work?
[+] [-] hso1|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] time0ut|7 years ago|reply
Either way, Yelp sounds absolutely toxic if they required him to be available like that. Expecting anyone to be available 24/7/365 is absurd. Set up an on-call rotation. Establish escalation chains. Designate backups. These are basic procedures. If this guy was so critical that there was no-one else in the company that could do whatever it was, hire someone else.
[+] [-] harimau777|7 years ago|reply
This is excluding extreme cases like if someone claimed that their religion has dozens of major holidays a year. To my knowledge, no major religion does that.
[+] [-] mithr|7 years ago|reply
> The law requires an employer or other covered entity to reasonably accommodate an employee's religious beliefs or practices, unless doing so would cause more than a minimal burden on the operations of the employer's business. This means an employer may be required to make reasonable adjustments to the work environment that will allow an employee to practice his or her religion.
IANAL, but I believe there is a difference between a person being unavailable due to golfing vs. due to a religious belief, since a person's religious belief is a protected category whereas their sporting activities are not. If it was company policy to shave one's head, but an employee's religion prohibited them from doing so, the company would be discriminating against that person even if they required everyone to shave their heads (caveat: assuming a shaved head was not actually important to the employer's business). Otherwise, a company could "uniformly" apply a rule that "just so happens" to only apply to a specific religion (or gender, or any other protected category), and use that to effectively ban those who fall under that category.
Now, in this specific case, I don't know if he'll be able to show that supporting his beliefs wouldn't have caused Yelp "more than a minimal burden", but I think that's what he's going after.
[+] [-] reaperducer|7 years ago|reply
"Lee also told Weathers, who is pursuing a degree in ministry leadership and has a severely autistic son, that he didn’t care about Weathers’ religious holidays or children, the suit claimed."
[+] [-] johnminter|7 years ago|reply
For his own health and well being as a family, he needs to find new employment. Find a job with a more reasonable work/life balance and adapt lifestyle choices to fit the budget.
I know a chaplain that has been at the bedside of many people during their final hours. None ever thought that they should have spent more time at the office.
[+] [-] phonon|7 years ago|reply
https://www.workplacefairness.org/religious-discrimination
10. Can my employer prevent me from taking off on religious holidays or my day of worship?
You should start by letting your employer know that there is a conflict between your religious observances and your work schedule. When your employer's workplace policies interfere with your religious practices, you can ask for what is called a "reasonable accommodation": a change in a workplace rule or policy which would allow you to engage in a religious practice without conflicting with your work obligations.
Your employer is required to provide you with such an accommodation unless it would impose an "undue hardship" on the employer's business, defined as an accommodation that is too costly or difficult to provide. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) who oversees these types of claims, has interpreted an undue hardship to mean anything more than regular administrative costs, anything that reduces workplace efficiency or impairs workplace safety, anything infringing on other employees' job rights or causes those said employees' to carry the accommodated employee's share of burdensome work, or if the proposed accommodation conflicts with another law or regulation. Thus, employers are obligated to try in good faith to resolve the religious conflict, or identify an actual monetary or administrative expense. It is important for you to work closely with your employer to find an appropriate accommodation.
If the accommodation would impose a burden on the employer that cannot be resolved, the employer is not required to allow the accommodation. Many accommodations, however, do not require any monetary or administrative burdens. Whether your employer can accommodate your religious practices will depend upon the nature of the work and the workplace. Usually, your employer can allow you to use lunch or other break times for religious prayer. If you require additional time for prayer, your employer can require you to make up the time.
Employers must give time off for the Sabbath or holy days except in an emergency, unless the employee works in key health and safety occupations or the employee's presence is critical to the company on any given day. This time off does not have to be paid, however. If employees don't come to work, employers may give them leave without pay, may require the amount of time to be made up, or may allow the employee to charge the time against any other leave with pay, except sick pay.
[+] [-] mindslight|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhall1468|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thirdsun|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mannykannot|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] randycupertino|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kokokokoko|7 years ago|reply
Not a hospital. Nothing was burning down. Not even transportation or infrastructure related.
A review website. 24/7/365. For a review website.
[+] [-] bsg75|7 years ago|reply
Expecting employees to respond to non-emergencies off hours is an excellent way to get them to become less responsive.
When everything is urgent, nothing is.
[+] [-] NoblePublius|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rdtsc|7 years ago|reply
Otherwise this is a bit like "unlimited vacation". Yes you can take it, but you never know when they'll come back and say "looks like you're not applying your full potential, so we're gonna go ahead an put you on probation".
> Lee also told Weathers [...] that he didn’t care about Weathers’ religious holidays or children, the suit claimed.
I think this is mostly about naming and shaming. As the lawsuit could involve a discovery phase, Yelp might want to settle to avoid revealing to the whole world their management "culture".
[+] [-] tschwimmer|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DevX101|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] root_axis|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aeturnum|7 years ago|reply
You're correct that any employee who decided to not answer their phone for a period might attract the same displeasure, but we have laws in the US that protect people who are observing religious holidays and he was, in fact, observing one. I guess Yelp could argue that his observation was unreasonably extreme, but that seems unlikely to pass muster.
[+] [-] Aloha|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eli_gottlieb|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wlesieutre|7 years ago|reply
https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/wysk/workplace_religious_...
>Examples of common religious accommodations include:
>a Catholic employee needs a schedule change so that he can attend church services on Good Friday
Is being out of contact for 12 hours on Good Friday an "undue hardship" for the business? I'm not a lawyer but I'm skeptical.
[+] [-] dev_dull|7 years ago|reply
> "Yelp respects religious and personal responsibilities and makes reasonable accommodations when requested" (emphasis added)
I haven't read any court papers. My guess is their defense will hinge on them trying to prove the plaintiff didn't adequate accommodations.
Doesn't pass the smell test if you ask me. If it's important enough to fire somebody over, it's important enough to have a clear escalation strategy in case one person isn't available.
[+] [-] avar|7 years ago|reply
I.e. this wasn't just some random manager, but evidently someone they needed to be available to grant out of hours access to their offices.
[+] [-] doktrin|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] jqcoffey|7 years ago|reply
I work for large adtech company in France and out here oncall is paid (even if you’re not called) and we never intrude on personal time unless there is a major disaster, and even then there are almost always enough folks being paid to handle the oncall event to take care of things.
We do have R&D offices in the US and I don’t know the specifics of HR policy wrt oncall there, but everyone rolls up to the French HQ so I know it remains human-first.
[+] [-] rpmcmurphy|7 years ago|reply
I remember previous jobs where late night emails demanding edits to someone's slide deck were routine (and anything is not urgent, it is editing some product manager's slide deck). That shit can wait until Monday, and if you are throwing it on me because you procrastinated, that's your problem.
[+] [-] sjg007|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wyclif|7 years ago|reply