Managers are usually sticklers about attendance, but Verizon recently learned an expensive lesson about its mandatory attendance policies from a 2011 class action lawsuit by employees and the EEOC. The suit asserted that Verizon denied reasonable accommodations to several hundred employees, disciplining, or firing them for missing too many days of work and refusing to make exceptions for those whose absences were caused by their disabilities. According to the EEOC, Verizon violated the ADA because its no-fault attendance policy was an inflexible and “unreasonable” one-size-fits-all rule.The EEOC required Verizon to pay $20 million to settle the suit, the largest single disability discrimination settlement in the agency’s history. The settlement also forced Verizon to change its attendance policy to include reasonable accommodations for persons with disabilities. A third requirement was that Verizon provide regular training on ADA requirements to all mangers responsible for administering attendance policies.
Answer the following questions:
What are some specific rules that would fit within a fair and reasonable attendance policy?
How would you decide whether an employee was taking advantage of an absenteeism policy?