Bosses mandated them back to the office. They took legal action instead.

Washington Post via MSN ^ | May 6, 2024 | Danielle Abril, Taylor Telford

[where's_the_Outrage?]

After more than two years of fighting against return-to-office mandates, workers are fed up with their bosses’ inflexible policies and are taking their battle to court.

Zacchery Belval, a designer from Connecticut who has congenital heart disease and severe anxiety, was fired after refusing to return to the office. Despite submitting several doctor’s notices about his medical need to work from home, his employer denied his request citing in-person job duties. Now, he’s suing the company in the U.S. District Court of Connecticut.

“They just said either you come back … or you’re fired,” Belval said. “It was literally screaming matches with management every day saying, ‘Hey, this is about health,’ and management going, ‘We don’t care.’” As companies across the United States increasingly take a hard-line stance on office mandates, an increasing number of workers are elevating their complaints to court and federal labor agencies like the National Labor Relations Board and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Workers argue that mandates can be unjust, discriminate against people with disabilities and is a retaliatory action against unionization efforts. Employers that have backtracked from flexible work argue that being in the office is necessary as it improves company culture, collaboration and productivity. The outcomes of these cases could be critical and force employers to reevaluate their policies, some lawyers say.

[cymbeline]

“The nature of many jobs is analytical which is best done in isolation. “

That’s me. I like people but group efforts aren’t what I do best.

[Cronos]

There are 3 cases:
1. Those who were hired to work remotely and have it in their contracts
2. Those who were hired to work partially in the office
3. Those who were hired to work in the office but that changed and there was an addendum signed

[Cronos]

Legally, unless specified in the contract, you can’t work in other countries - or in most cases, in other states.

[Jonty30]

Sure, legally.

But how many companies would figure that out, if you are using a VPN>

[Cronos]

It depends on the job and what is the task.

I work in analytics and program management — now for the core work of development + unit, integration, stress, regression and extreme point testing, these activities can be done from home by individuals or with online collaboration.

For requirements gathering and initial analysis (or HL analysis) it can be done at home.

But for deep-dive analysis and design, I look for in-person workshops. Nothing beats a group of people around a whiteboard.

So it depend son what and where

[Svartalfiar]

He may have a case, given his health condition. As I understand it from corporate training, Federal law requires reasonable accommodation for people with disabilities.

If the article is correct, it doesn’t appear the company tried to make the accommodation.

Only after the lockdowns is work from home a reasonable accommodation in any industry except sales or IT. Or I guess phone call center guy. But the big issue here (for him at least) is 'BACK'. What accommodation did he have before the lockdowns? I'd bet he was in the office five days a week, with his medical issues, no problem. Why should he now require such a majorly different accommodation when nothing actual has really changed from pre-lockdown to today?

employer denied his request citing in-person job duties.

They already started giving him three days a week at home, and that, to me, sounds way beyond reasonable for a job that actually has in-person duty requirements. How in-person they actually need is beyond the excerpt, so I'll take it at face value. But even if that's more of an excuse and not that definite, two days in the office is still more than reasonable.