Virgin Atlantic Airlines has agreed to a settlement of a religious freedom case that will require the carrier to allow an employee time off from work for religious observances, the authorities said yesterday.
The settlement covers all passenger service employees at Virgin's terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport, and will require the company to develop special work schedules where possible to accommodate an employee's request for time off for religious observance.
A complaint was filed by one of Virgin's former passenger service agents at J.F.K. and was referred to Mr. Spitzer's office by Assemblyman Dov Hikind. It said that the company had refused to accommodate the employee's request for time off to observe the Sabbath and ultimately forced him to resign.
The attorney general settled another religion case this month involving a food equipment repair technician from Monsey, N.Y., who applied for a job available at the Rockland branch of the Hobart Corporation, a food equipment and service company based in Ohio.
The technician, Zalmen Pollak, an Orthodox Jew, was not given the job because he would not work on Saturdays.
Mr. Pollak offered to work on Sundays instead. But the company refused him. "I was crying," said Mr. Pollak, who has eight children. "I didn't know what to do." He eventually found his way to the attorney general's office.
Andrew G. Celli Jr., chief of the attorney general's civil rights bureau, said: "The idea of the initiative is to give life to all these laws. To make them real to people in the workplace to a reasonable degree."
Under the Hobart settlement, the employers involved must now make accommodations for the religious beliefs of their employees; create a "Sabbath friendly" work schedule for one in every four repair technician positions; provide back pay to Mr. Pollak (the amount to be determined); offer binding arbitration to anyone else who comes forward with a similar claim within 90 days of the decision; and put into place training on religious accommodation requirements for all Hobart staff members involved in recruitment and hiring at the company's six sites in New York State.