Richard Cohen was quoted in The Street article "How to Get Your Religion and Your Job to Coexist in Peace." While the full text can be found in the January 24, 2014, issue of The Street, a synopsis is noted below.
Multiple requests for time off from work for "devotional" purposes can result in an upset boss or dismissal. It is almost always possible to take time off for religious reasons, but just how much is up for debate.
Every company's policy is different, says Cohen. While some companies require that employees use vacation time for days spent in worship, others may ask that employees take those days as unpaid time or make up for the lost hours by altering their schedule throughout the week.
"If an employer can reasonably accommodate a person who needs to be off on the Sabbath, then they must do so," Cohen says. "The cases we see in court typically revolve around people working on the Sabbath – a day that your religion requires you to be off."
That distinction – the religious "requirement" to be worshipping rather than working – is an important one, Cohen says. For example, Christians are not required to attend and worship at a relative's baptism, just as Jews are not required to attend and worship at a relative's bar mitzvah. Both religions are required to keep the Sabbath holy, though. If your religion doesn't required you to be in worship on a particular day, your employer isn't technically required to give you that day off. With that said, most employers that value their staff will work to accommodate all requests.
"If you're not making an excessive amount of requests, then you're not creating undue hardship for your employer," Cohen says. "If you want to leave at 3 p.m. on Friday for worship and you offer to work an extra half hour every day that week leading up to it, that's a reasonable request. But if you start asking to be off three days a week and your employer is faced with an excessive number of absences, then it's going to be a burden for them to accommodate you."
Ultimately, if you want a lot of days off for worship, it's going to come out of your store of personal days, vacation days or sick days – or you simply won't get paid, Cohen says.
"If you want every holiday on the religious calendar off, then that's going to add up to a lot of days, and if you run out of vacation days, you're going to end up taking unpaid time off. There is no requirement for an employer to pay you if you're not working," he says.
Employees who may be hoping to take worship days indiscriminately need to temper their expectations, Cohen says.
"There will be situations where employers don't have the availability to rearrange everyone's schedules for you. Some employers are only open 40 hours a week, and you just won't have any leeway there."
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