or call (703) 277-3511.
Welcome To New Members
Contributed by Vice President, Membership Bonnie Little
The Dulles Chapter continues to grow. We welcome the following new members who joined the Chapter during March:
Jenny Brooks - Independent HR Contractor
Jacqueline F. Dohmen - HRS Director, Republic Services of VA, LLC
Daniel Eck, PHR - Human Resources Generalist, Computer Associates
Lori Kavanaugh - Manager, Human Resources, Marine Spill Response Corp.
Szilvia Konya - Executive Recruiter, The Buller Group LLC
Heather Mason
Craig L. Petry, SPHR - Manager, HRD Operations, Nextel Communications
Tamara Price - HR Manager, Oberthur Card Systems
Douglas B. Turner, SPHR - Vice President, Human Resources, Centex Construction Company
Lisa Turner, PHR - Human Resources Manager, Enterprise Rent-A-Car
Linda White - Human Resources Manager, Apptix
Michelle Fearn - Human Resources Manager, Home Depot
Michelle Czarnopyski, SPHR - Compensation Consultant, Nextel Communications
Jill Leonard
John Scalia
Kirstin Covelli, PHR - Area Employee Relations Manager, The Hertz Corp.
Belinda A. Davis - Human Resources Generalist, UTRON, Inc.
Beverly Wagoner, SPHR - Director, Human Resources, Northrop Grumman
Planning Begins For SHRM's 2006 Conference And Exposition To Be Held In Washington, D.C.
Kick-Off Meeting, Wednesday, April 28
HRA-NCA members Lynne Sport and Grace Dobson are the Conference Volunteer Co-Chairs for the upcoming 2006 SHRM Conference and Exposition to be held in the Nation’s Capital. The conference will extend from June 17, 2006 through June 21, 2006 at the Washington Convention Center. The Human Resource Association of the National Capital Area is the host chapter and requests support from all local chapters to ensure success.
A kick-off meeting will be held on Wednesday, April 28 at Hamburger Hamlet in Bethesda, MD from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Discussion will include volunteer opportunities at the D.C. booth in San Diego, CA during this year’s conference and ideas for attracting 700 volunteers for 2006.
RSVP to Grace Dobson at (301) 236-8936 or grace.a.dobson@verizon.com.
"Building A Better HR Business Plan"
NOVA SHRM Professional Development Seminar
Tuesday, May 10, Fairview Park Marriott
A critical part of becoming a strategic HR business partner is being able to write a measurable business plan and following through on its implementation. This highly interactive program will provide senior HR professionals with step-by-step instructions on how to create an effective business plan. Speaker Kathleen Ferris, Vice President of Human Resources for McDonald Bradley, will discuss:
- HR’s role in strategic planning,
- What an HR strategic business plan is,
- The steps to developing a strategic business plan,
- How to align current HR programs and policies with business plan objectives, and
- How to create an action plan and effective measures.
For more information, visit www.novashrm.org. The deadline for registration and cancellation is 11 a.m. on Friday, May 6.
PHR/SPHR 3-Day Prep Course To Be Offered Through George Mason University
May 16-18, Center for Innovative Technology, Herndon
George Mason University is offering a 3-day training course to prepare human resource professionals for the upcoming PHR/SPHR exam. Instructors Paul Shibelski and Melanie Ott will provide a comprehensive review of the entire body of HR knowledge in preparation for the PHR/SPHR exam. The program will help to highlight areas that may require further study.
Date: May 16-18, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Where Center for Innovative Technology, Herndon, VA
Cost: $995 for Dulles SHRM Members
Information: www.ocpe.gmu.edu or call (703) 993-4800 and ask for Sandra
Employer Strategy Session Of Governor Warner's Early Childhood Summit
Wednesday, May 25, University of Richmond
Senior human resource officers and chief executives are cordially invited to attend the Employer Strategy Session of Governor Warner’s Early Childhood Summit to learn about recruitment and retention strategies that address the child care needs of today’s workforce and strengthen the workforce of tomorrow. Speakers will include Carol Evans, CEO, Working Mother Media, and Donna Klein, CEO, Corporate Voices for Working Families.
This program is approved for 3.5 recertification credit hours toward PHR and SPHR recertification through HRCI. To register, call (804) 726-7961.
Upcoming HR Leadership Awards
Tuesday, June 7
This year’s HR Leadership Awards will be held on Tuesday, June 7 at the McLean Hilton. The evening program will feature Billy Cambell, President, U.S. Networks, Discovery Communications, Inc. The program will begin with a reception at 6 p.m.
Award nominations close on March 15. Sponsorship opportunities are still available. For more information, go to www.hrleadership.org.
2005 Virginia State Conference "Reflections At The Beach"
September 25-27, Cavalier Hotel, Virginia Beach
Planning is well underway for the upcoming 2005 Virginia State Conference to be held in Virginia Beach on September 25-27. Join HR colleagues from Virginia for daily keynote speakers, breakout sessions, and vendor exhibits.
Sponsorship and exhibit information is available online at www.hrshrm.org or by contacting jhurrell@headwaystaffing.com or pcreef@headwaystaffing.com. Early Bird Registration is available until May 31 at a discounted price of $290. Registration prices increase to $350 after May 31 and $375 after July 31.
Mark Your Calendars
Upcoming SHRM Conferences and Seminars
2005 Conferences
- May 22-25 - WorldatWork Annual Conference & Exposition, New Orleans, LA
- June 19-22 - SHRM Annual Conference & Exposition, San Diego, CA
- September 25-27 - 2005 Virginia State Conference, Virginia Beach, VA (www.hrshrm.org)
2005 Chapter Dinner Meetings
- May 18 (Dinner Meeting) - “Best Practices in Performance Management: Can It Be Stress-Free?” with Sharon Armstrong, author and HR Consultant, and an expert panel
- June 15 (Dinner Meeting) - “Coaching for the Bottom Line: Using Personal Development to Achieve Business Results” with Alice Waagen, Ph.D., Workforce Learning
- July 20 (Breakfast Meeting) - To be announced
- August 17 (Dinner Meeting) - To be announced
- September 21 (Dinner Meeting) - “HR and the Law” with Misti Mukerjee, Odin, Feldman & Pittleman, PC
- October 19 (Breakfast Meeting) - Disability Month Speaker TBD
- November 16 (Dinner Meeting) - To be announced
- December 7 (Dinner Meeting) - Holiday Party
- December 14 (Dinner Meeting) - Transition Board Meeting
Costco's Appearance Crusade
By Alison Stein Wellner
Contributed by Diversity/Workforce Education Director Evelyn Kaiser
When a Costco employee who belongs to the Church of Body Modification insisted that her religious beliefs trumped the company dress code, a legal battle ensued. This report examines what happens when an employee’s religious beliefs conflict with the company dress code.
In December, a four-year-long court battle came to an end when a U.S. Court of Appeals dismissed a $2 million religious discrimination lawsuit brought against Costco, the nation’s largest wholesale retailer, which logged some $47 billion in sales last year.
The case, brought by West Springfield, MA employee Kimberly Cloutier, was certainly not your average religious discrimination matter. Provoked by a change in the wholesaler’s dress code policy, it pitted facial piercings against professional appearance, and involved, among other things, an eyebrow ring and a small church that few people have ever heard of.
Beneath this quirky legal matter is an underlying issue of growing concern to all employers: balancing an employee’s religious beliefs against the business interests of a company.
Background
The story began in 2001, when Costco revised its dress code to prohibit all facial jewelry, aside from earrings. Costco made this change in order to promote what the company considered a professional appearance, court records indicate. (Judy Vadney, Costco’s personnel director, declined to comment, citing the recent end of "very expensive litigation.")
Kimberly Cloutier, a cashier and an employee since 1997, had numerous body piercings and tattoos on her upper arms. Soon after the new policy was disseminated, Cloutier’s supervisor informed her that she had to remove her facial piercings--in particular, her eyebrow ring, which she refused to do.
At that point, Cloutier indicated that she was a member of the Church of Body Modification, and said that her eyebrow piercing was part of her religion.
The Church of Body Modification, established in 1999, has about 1,000 members and encourages its adherents to "grow as individuals through body modification and its teachings" to "promote growth in mind, body and spirit." It uses a Round Rock, Texas, post office box as its mailing address; several founding members are in Phoenix.
The church urges its members to be "confident role models in learning, teaching and displaying body modification," which includes piercing, tattooing, branding, cutting and body manipulation. Court records indicate that Cloutier interpreted this to mean that her piercings should be visible at all times, and believed that she was prohibited from removing or covering her facial jewelry. The conflict with Costco’s dress code was clear.
Religion Emerges As A Workplace Issue
An employee’s religious beliefs often enter into the workplace, creating a sometimes awkward--if not potentially litigious--situation for employers, who are required by federal law not to discriminate on the basis of religion.
While many employers are more familiar with employees’ requests for work-schedule changes to accommodate religious practice and beliefs, a growing number are becoming acquainted with complaints about dress codes on the basis of religion, says Patrick Kilker, an attorney at Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott LLC in Pittsburgh. More dress-code requests will come. "With growing religious diversity in this country, you can bet on these cases becoming more common," he says.
Many religions impose some sort of requirement upon their adherents in terms of appearance: Some require the growing of facial hair, for example, or the wearing of certain accoutrement, such as a Sikh turban, a Jewish yarmulke or a Muslim hijab, or head scarf. Other religions require certain markings, tattoos or, in the case of the Church of Body Modification, a whole host of practices that might interfere with a company’s dress code.
These religiously motivated practices leave some companies with a dilemma as to how to accommodate an employee’s religious beliefs if they conflict with standards of grooming or appearance on the job.
The resolution of this dilemma is not entirely up to a company’s discretion. The law guides a company’s hand, says Patrick H. Hicks, managing partner at the Las Vegas office of the employment law firm Littler Mendelson LLP.
According to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, "the employer has an obligation to reasonably accommodate an employee’s religious beliefs," he says, which includes making allowances for an employee’s garb or appearance when it is influenced by religion. "But it's not an absolute," he adds. If an accommodation would create an "undue hardship" on the employer, the employer is not obliged to accommodate an employee’s religious beliefs.
"Undue hardship" and "reasonable accommodation" are terms often sorted out in court, Hicks says. "These cases typically resolve themselves on a case-by-case, fact-by-fact basis. What might be an undue hardship for one company might not be an undue hardship for another. The exact same accommodation might be reasonable for one company and unreasonable for another," he says.
An employer’s first goal is to stay out of an expensive and uncertain court battle. The first step toward that goal is to strive for a reasonable accommodation that works for the individual employee. "Engage in an interactive process with the employee, ask what it is that the religion requires, and what the company can do to reasonably accommodate," says Hicks.
Employers can’t always get the reasonable accommodation they want. The court record shows that early conversations between Cloutier and Costco could not be considered productive.
A supervisor instructed Cloutier to remove her facial jewelry. Cloutier refused, and the next day filed a religious discrimination case with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. When she returned to work for her next shift, she met with the store manager. During that meeting, she suggested covering her eyebrow piercing with a flesh-colored bandage. The store manager rejected this suggestion, and told her to either remove the piercing or go home. She left.
Several weeks passed, and while Cloutier awaited resolution of her EEOC claim, she was terminated via a letter, which cited her unexcused absences resulting from noncompliance with the dress code. The EEOC mediation process kept the parties in contact, however, and in August, Costco offered to let Cloutier return to work, wearing either a plastic retainer in her piercings to keep the holes from healing and closing, or a bandage over her jewelry.
Although this was an accommodation that she had suggested earlier, Cloutier now refused. The court records show that Cloutier’s position was that "the proffered accommodations would be inadequate, because the (Church of Body Modification’s) tenets, as she interprets them, require her to display her facial piercings at all times. Replacing her eyebrow piercing with a plastic retainer, or covering it with a Band-Aid would thus contradict her religious convictions." (By not accepting Cloutier’s initial offer of accommodation, Costco missed "a golden opportunity to avoid four years of litigation," points out law firm Nixon Peabody in its analysis of the case.)
Cloutier now maintained that the only reasonable accommodation would be to excuse her from Costco’s dress code, allowing her to wear her facial jewelry to work. Costco’s response: This would interfere with the company’s ability to maintain a professional image. Negotiations broke down.
If an accommodation can’t be reached with an employee, the next step is to clearly identify "the legitimate business interests the company is trying to preserve and protect," says Hicks. The courts often give employers wide latitude in what is considered an undue hardship.
Several cases, for example, have found that employers are not discriminating when they require an employee or job applicant to be clean-shaven, in order to maintain an image of cleanliness, or for safety matters. For instance, in a 1984 case against Chevron, a court decided that the company did not have to exempt a Sikh employee from a rule requiring that all machinists be clean-shaven, because the policy was based on the necessity of wearing a respirator with a gas-tight face seal.
In Costco’s case, the business interest was in presenting a neat, clean professional appearance. The court decided that if it forced Costco to create an exception for Cloutier’s eyebrow ring and other piercings, it would create an undue hardship on the company.
The court held the following: "It is axiomatic that, for better or for worse, employees reflect on employers. This is particularly true of employees who regularly interact with customers. ... Even if Cloutier did not regularly receive any complaints about her appearance, her facial jewelry influenced Costco’s public image and, in Costco’s calculation, detracted from its professionalism. … Costco has made a determination that facial piercings, aside from earrings, detract from the ‘neat, clean, and professional image’ that it aims to cultivate. Such a business determination is within its discretion."
With that, Cloutier’s discrimination case ended.
Advice for Employers
While this was a victory for Costco, and the case was hailed as a victory for employers seeking to balance dress codes against various religious claims, there are a couple of points to keep in mind, says Hicks. If Cloutier did not work as a cashier, but in a position where she did not interact with customers, Costco might have found it difficult to make the same argument against her facial jewelry.
Second, Cloutier’s hard-line, no-compromise approach worked against her in court, says Kilker. The court cited several cases involving jewelry where employees have insisted that the only accommodation is exemption from a dress code policy. In one case, an employee wore a gold cross pin; in another, an employee took a vow to wear a graphic anti-abortion button for religious reasons.
Courts take a dim view of the inflexibility of the employee’s stance. "We are faced with the … situation of an employee who will accept no accommodation short of an outright exemption from a neutral dress code. Granting such an exemption would be an undue hardship because it would adversely affect the employer’s public image," the appeals court held. An employee that offers several accommodations, even if he or she is later rejected by the employer, might fare better in court, says Hicks.
Finally, it’s important to note the grounds that the court did not decide on: whether Cloutier’s religious convictions were legitimate. First, courts are loath to determine the sincerity of an individual’s religious beliefs, Hicks says. Second, in the eyes of the EEOC, "it doesn’t take much to become a religion," Kilker says.
The EEOC, Kilker says, defines religion broadly to include moral or ethical beliefs as to what is right or wrong. "In order to constitute a religion, the employee’s belief must be sincere, and it must occupy a place in the employee’s life that is parallel to the place filled by God, in traditional religions," he says. "That makes it a low threshold to establish that you are a member of a religion and that you need an accommodation so you can practice or observe that religion."
This means that employers shouldn’t get caught in the "is this really a religion game," says Kilker, when confronted with an employee who is citing religious grounds for noncompliance with a dress code. "Generally, I would err on the side of attempting to accommodate someone’s religion, even if you have doubts that it would constitute a religion, in view of the EEOC’s broad interpretation of what a religion is," he says.
An attempt to accommodate won’t guarantee that employers stay out of court, but it’s a start.
That’s all for this month unless you have any ideas or suggestions? This is your chapter - let us know what’s on your mind!
Kurt Cowles
President
Dulles SHRM
kcowles@mitre.org
Join Us For "Best Practices in Performance Management: Can The Process Be Stress-Free" On Wednesday, May 18 (Dinner Meeting)