Reasonable Accomadation

[jfrei]

I have decided to continue to work and have a question about reasonable accomadation. I work for a collecting bargain senority based union at American Airlines. I have letters from doctors and a VA counsler stating I cannot work night shift because it provokes extreme insomnia due to complications with my TBI. I also have ER paperwork with the diagnosis as well. I a stressed because its a seniority based bidding on shifts I am a new hire only been there 7 months my supervisor gave me the paperwork to fill out with my doctor for the accommadations. Does anyone know if I am going to have to quit or will they bend the union law for me? I understand this is a "special circumstance" and I just want to know my chances of being fired?

[broncovet]

Your employer gets to decide what is a "reasonable accomodation" to your disability.  While it sounds reasonable to me, it will be interesting to see what your employer says.  My guess is they will comply if they like you and want to keep you, and non comply otherwise.  

[john999]

Are you a probationary employee or full bargaining member as in permanent employee?  I worked for USPS and was given what they called Reasonable Accommodation.  To get it I had to file for workers compensation due to the same problem as yours being night work.  I had been an employee for about 12 years and was on day shift.  Then my bid was abolished and I was sent to night shift with days off opposite my wife's days off.  I had to actually file a OWCP claim and hire a psychiatrist to fight a case for aggravation of bipolar disorder.  I did win the case and the USPS shifted me to days, but with permanent and opposite days off from my wife's.  I filed  an EEOC complaint  and in my complaint I said that the job the USPS created for me on days was a imaginary job which it was.   I had no real work to do and no chance of ever getting another bid job or any best qualified job.  The EEOC judge said all the USPS had to do was give me 8 hours of imaginary work and pay me and they were living up to their Reasonable Accommodation requirements.  I was pissed because the judge would not even concede that I was disabled because I could wipe my own behind.  I wanted to kill that judge and that smirking employer rep. who pretended to be Perry Mason.  I was out soon on total disability with federal worker's compensation paying the bills.   However, I found that if I was getting full disability from fed. work comp. I could not get SSDI or my federal disability pension.   I ended up getting TDIU from the VA and got SSDI and my federal disability pension.  I was actually making much more than when I was working because I also had a private disability insurance policy that is paying me to this day.  All this because the USPS wanted to make an example out of me.  They could have created a real job for me.  I wanted to keep working, but I had chronic pain issues and depression so it was hopeless.  I hope your employer is more enlightened than mine who were and still are living in the stone age.  I don't have experience in worker's compensation or reasonable accommodation in private sector, but I bet it is just as bad as government sector.  If the union is involved don't expect them to spring to your aide because reasonable accommodation usually messes with their seniority system.  Often the people you have worked side by side with for a long period will turn against you if your reasonable accommodation gives you better hours or days off than they have.  If you want friends get a dog.  Co-workers for big corporations are not friends.  Just in it for number one like all of us I guess. I could write a book on this subject but the cuss words would make it unpublishable.

[john999]

Bronco

 

                       Since their is a union involved it will be more complicated than just "liking or disliking" you as an employee.  I had a great work record, but when I filed for workers compensation in order to get reasonable accommodation I became an "enemy of the people" on all sides. Nobody but my psychiatrist and the orthopedist that understood federal worker's compensation rules lifted a finger to help me.  I was a man without a country so to speak.  The union hated me because I was messing with seniority system and employer just hated me for bucking their system and for filing workers compensation.  When I realized they did not like worker's compensation claims I filed about five more and got paid for each one via schedule awards etc.  I first formally asked for a reasonable accommodation and when I was turned down flat I filed for worker's compensation.  When I won the USPS were flabbergasted and even more so when I brought to their attention that when they moved me back from nights and weekends off I lost money for night pay and weekend pay.  It was right in their book of rules they were too dumb to read, but I read it.   Before this I had been a union steward so USPS did not love me and afterwards the worker's compensation case they wanted to get rid of me.   They did but they paid more than if they would have just accommodated me with a real job.  The union fired me as a steward also so I hated both teams.   I still hate them 15 years later.