Ted posts an entry on the Americans with Disabilities Act below; that’s a common topic on this site. Why? Because it’s a completely standardless law; while there are a few guidelines provided by various regulatory agencies, the law as written requires “reasonable accommodations” — a standard which is inherently subjective and which can only be determined after the fact. A field day for trial lawyers.
Case in point: I’m sure many people can imagine a person with a “severe and painful degenerative arthritic condition” suing because his employer forces him to work without breaks for rest or meals. An employee needs a short break, isn’t given it by his slavedriving employer, so he files a lawsuit. Understandable. But how many people would have thought that they could be sued for being too nice to an employee?
Well, under the ADA, it can happen. Last week, a Florida postal worker sued the Postal Service for giving him lunch breaks. He claims his arthritis is exacerbated by not moving around, and therefore it amounts to discrimination under the ADA not to let him work through lunch. (No word on why he can’t keep active on his own during lunch.)
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Wonder whether this is less about the not moving during lunch and more about the not being allowed to flex his schedule (work from 8:00 – 4:00 with no lunch instead of 8:00 – 4:30 with a lunch) or not being allowed to collect overtime for working through the lunch without adjusting the schedule to compensate.
If I recall correctly, Congress specifically refused to set guidelines when they passed the ADA. They left it up to the courts to determine what is “reasonable” accommodations. At the time I commented that this legislation should have been entitled the full employment act for lawyers. Just how irresponsible could the Congress be to pass an act that was impossible to be in compliance with because there were no guidelines to follow? It guaranteed that there would be lawsuits and that is what we got.
That’s not a bad point RN, but Congress really may not be the appropriate body to set standards, and more likely than not considering the wide array of disabilities, treatments, and occupations; creating a set standard would be equally irresponsible.
Should Congress then place the burden on doctors to create work instructions and/or lmitations for every patient? If this happens, the insurance companies will invest tens of millions in creating standardized orders for millions of disabilities, work/physcal lmitations, and reasonable accomodations…exposing doctors and insurance companies to even more litigation than they already face.
What Richard said – “Lawyer Employment Act” is the truth.
Are postal workers unionized? If so, I’m betting the contract forces the management to give the workers a lunch break, no exeptions.
No John, it is not that Congress has to set standards. In fact in most cases it is the agencies that are charged with enforcing the law that set the standards. However, in those cases the businesses will have a set of standards (reasonable or not) that they must follow before they are sued. In this case Congress specifically stated that the standards would be set through lawsuits. Thus, in effect, Congress gave a loaded gun to lawyers and told them they could shoot anyone they wanted. It was up to the courts to decide whether or not they “shot” the right business. Actually I was being kind when I called Congress irresponsible. It was sheer lunacy.
We have lots of legal rules, of course, that are not reduced to detailed operational effect except through the evolution of decisional law.
I share jen’s curiosity about the real gravamen of this suit. But the press report indicates that the postal service used to let this fellow work through lunch, and so it seems possible that there’s some factual validity to the claim. I don’t know what an “automation clerk” does, but specific activities depend on specific body parts and movements that might not be replicable on a lunch break, and it may be difficult to stop some activities and then start them up again. If that’s so, it’s not a situation that regulators might necessarily have been expected specifically to anticipate.
In any event, I think it has yet to be established that an employer can be sued “under the ADA” for giving an employee a lunch break, except in the weak sense that someone has reportedly filed a complaint invoking the ADA, raising such a claim and seeking an accommodation — an event that proves little about the ADA until some judicial ruling gives the claim legs under some set of facts. As for getting sued for “being too nice,” that, of course, is just a Richard Nieporent characterization. The employee apparently doesn’t regard the mandatory lunch break as a kindness.