Occupational Safety Concerns
Mangan Communications (2005), a publisher of OSHA safety standards for business, reports that there are a host of occupations that place limitations on jewelry in compliance with OSHA's general safety regulations such as 29 CFR 1910. These include, but are not limited to, manufacturing industries, processing industries, and healthcare and health-related industries. For example in cereal processing which is the treatment of cereals and other plants to prepare their starch for human food, animal feed, or industrial use, chemicals are often used and OSHA stipulations for this and other reasons include limitations on wearing jewelry of many types for those actually involved in the processing. On the other hand, employees with no involvement in processing of any type (e.g., clerical personnel) often will not have to adhere to these restrictions. In some cases, these rather general stipulations by OSHA have been interpreted by various companies and plants to deny employees the right to wear wedding bands. However, in this regard, Shaw (2004, p. 1) reports that:The courts have found companies within their rights to deny employees the right to wear even wedding bands, depending on the job.Still, this is not always the case with O
These include The Anti-Defamation League, based in New York, the Commission on Law and Social Action, The Council on American-Islamic Relations, Muslim Public Affairs Council which has offices in New York and Los Angeles, The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and The Pagan Pride Project in Indianapolis. In addition, employers must reasonably accommodate employees' religious practices unless they impose undue hardship on the business. There are also Jewish, Muslim and other legal resources for cases in which employees believe that the prohibition of wedding rings is unfair. If employees feel that OSHA stipulations and legislation is being unfairly applied in their particular cases, (such as prohibiting the use of wedding rings or forcing employees to cut them off their fingers if they cannot come loose) they do have recourse and can seek legal help from a variety of organizations. Legal cases involving religious expressions of all sorts, including wearing religious jewelry or jewelry of religious significance, have been discussed by the American Center for Law and Justice (1997) which points out that both court rulings and legislation allow for religious expressions of all types, and do not allow discriminatory behavior against religious expression. Occupational safety concerns can serve as one of these exceptions but there would be a need to show that accidents or direct physical harm can result from whatever religious expression is prohibited. It is also unlawful for employers, both private and public, to provide a hostile work environment in which employees experience discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, or insult associated with religious expression or conduct. Clearly then, employers have a very narrow window in terms of restricting religious expression and this includes the wearing of wedding rings. For example, constitutional considerations, specifically first amendment rights, resulted in the Amish being allowed freedom from many OSHA regulations on the grounds that compliance violated their religious rights (Baxter, 2004). Similar organizations include the Christian Legal Society's Center for Law and Religious Freedom and the Alliance Defense Fund. Brenda Nichol, 03-cv-646, a teacher, told she could not wear religious jewelry (a cross on a necklace) won with a ruling that school policy violated her right to religious expression. Otherwise, the likelihood is high that employers would lose their cases. For example, in The United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania v.
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Acceptance Essays
