Reasonable Accommodation

Reasonable accommodation is defined as any change in the work environment or in the way business is usually conducted that results in equal employment opportunity for an individual with a disability. With the Americans with Disabilities Act in full swing and more than 35,000 court cases on record, there is much to be done to get most companies into compliance. Reasonable Accommodation: Profitable Compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act was designed to provide those responsible for diversity and implementing the ADA with specific benchmark examples of how companies have provided accommodations that have had a positive impact on profitability, quality, employee and customer relations. This masterfully written book covers many important topics dealing directly with the ADA. It also provides numerous technologies available that can greatly increase productivity and quality of performance for disabled employees, as well as a "who's who" of case studies including: AT&T, Boeing, Federal Express, Ford Motor Co., Bank of America, Digital Equipment, General Electric Co., IBM, Motorola, WAUSAU Insurance Co., Sears Roebuck, Philip Morris, and many more.

More and more the modern workplace faces challenges of diversity and employability. There is an increasingly insistent need to match workforce diversity, or workers' own characteristics and choices, with employers' organizational and business requirements. In this context, the notion of reasonable accommodation inevitably arises. Concepts such as 'adaptability' and 'employability' not only require workers to adapt to new labour market circumstances but are also directed towards employers' duties to accommodate work and the workplace to the worker's situation. This book is the first study to analyse, at a global scale, how employment discrimination law gives shape to an accommodated workplace in three main areas of interest: age, disability, and religion/belief. Sixteen prominent labour and employment law scholars offer in-depth perspectives from Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Sweden, Russia, Israel, Canada, the United States, South Africa, and Australia. Each report fully integrates relevant legislation, case law, and legal doctrine and follows the same structure to allow easy comparisons across jurisdictions. Attention is also given to the roles of European Union law and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Issues and topics covered include the following: - the scope of 'accommodation'; - 'reasonable' defined; - recognized business requirements that may override the duty to accommodate; - when employers' neutrality policies to avoid accusations of discrimination may constitute indirect discrimination; - use of integration or re-integration strategies to accommodate disabled/incapable workers; - use of 'exit gateways' that enable employers to avoid liability in cases of disability discrimination; - when employers must take into account workers' family lives; and - when an obligation to reclassify a worker exists. These articles were originally presented as papers at the 2015 meeting of the International Association of Labour Law Journals hosted by the Institute for Labour Law of the University of Leuven. Ultimately the book makes clear that reasonable accommodation cannot be narrowed down to a formal anti-discrimination perspective but requires an integrative logic that can grow in a broader labour law context. As a compelling analysis of whether the idea of reasonable accommodation is winning ground in labour law in today's world, this book will prove of immeasurable value to labour and employment lawyers and judges, as well as to corporate counsel and academics in the field.

Often when a religious minority challenges mainstream customs, the phrase “reasonable accommodation” is at the centre of the ensuing debate. But does reasonable accommodation achieve its goal of integrating the rights of religious minorities with those of mainstream society, or does it really emphasize inequality? Reasonable Accommodation seeks to define the meaning of this phrase and to provide a much-needed critical assessment of its use within Canada and abroad. Woven throughout is commentary about whether there really is a religious majority in Canada, how the idea of “shared values” obscures debate, and how tolerating religious differences simply isn’t enough to guarantee equality.

Problems – of integration, failed political participation, and requests for various kinds of accommodation – seem to dominate the research on minority Muslims in Western nations. Beyond Accommodation offers a different perspective, showing how Muslim Canadians successfully navigate and negotiate their religiosity. The authors critique the model of reasonable accommodation, suggesting that it disempowers religious minorities by implicitly privileging Christianity and by placing the onus on minorities to make formal requests for accommodation. Through interviews, Muslim Canadians show that informal negotiation takes place all the time; scholars, however, have not been paying attention. This book proposes an alternative picture of how religious difference is woven into the fabric of Canadian society.

Recoge: 1. Human rights - 2. Anti-discrimination laws - 3. Achieving equality through law?

Growing interest in the field of mental health in the workplace among policy makers, clinicians, and researchers alike has been fueled by equal employment rights legislation and increasing disability statistics in mental heath. The importance of addressing this topic is underscored by the fact that depression now ranks second on the hierarchy of occupational disabilities. The problem is compounded by a host of factors, including major difficulties in job retention and productivity experienced by persons with mental health disabilities; younger age and higher education of persons with mental health problems; and labor shortages and an aging workforce in many industrialized countries. In addition, particularly in the United States, the vocational needs of army veterans returning from duty with mental health disorders require system-based solutions and new rehabilitation approaches. The pressure created by these powerful legislative, societal, and economic forces has not been matched by the state of evidence-based practices in the field of employment retention and job accommodation in mental health. Current research evidence is fragmented, limited in scope, difficult to access, and adversely affected by the traditional divide between the fields of psychiatry and psychology on one hand and interdisciplinary employment research and practices on the other. As a result, policy makers, employers, disability compensation systems, and rehabilitation and disability management professionals have been left without a critical "how to" evidence-informed toolbox for occupational practices to accommodate and retain persons with mental health disabilities in the workplace. Currently, no single source of knowledge and research evidence exists in the field that would guide best practices. Yet the need for workplace accommodations for persons with mental health disabilities has been growing and, based on epidemiological trends, is anticipated to grow even more in the future. These trends leave physicians, psychologists, occupational therapists, vocational rehabilitation professionals, disability managers, human resource professionals, and policy makers poorly prepared to face the challenge of integrating and maintaining persons with mental health disabilities in the workplace. The aim of the Handbook is to close the gap between the needs of the professionals and networks that work with or study persons with mental heath disorders in an employment context and the actual knowledge base in the field. The Handbook will be written in language that can easily be understood by readers representing a multitude of disciplines and research paradigms spanning the mental health, rehabilitation, and employment fields of inquiry. The Handbook will contribute an integration of the best quantitative and qualitative research in the field, together with experts’ consensus, regarding effective work retention and accommodation strategies and practices in mental health. The book will consist of five major sections, divided into chapters written by recognized experts in these areas.