Reference no: EM132881550

This Board will sound familiar. That's on purpose! Many situations you encounter in the practitioner world arch over multiple employment laws at the same time. It's up to you to know your stuff and guide your organizaiton appropriately.

Joe, a Welding employee in your steel manufacturing company, has been employed with you for 7 years and works full-time. He is known to suffer from sleep apnea. He has a CPAP machine that was prescribed following an overnight sleep study and discusses his progress with his sleep specialist and primary care physician. Joe's inability to get a good night's rest causes him to be groggy and tired in the mornings. This tiredness / exhaustion causes Joe to be tardy to work on an almost daily basis.

Your manufacturing company works 3 shifts and it's a very firm, set shedule (7a-3p, 3p-11p, 11p-7a). If Joe shows up at 7:01am, he's considered late and gets attendance demit points. Joe senses his job may be at risk, and shows up in your office to offer an explanation about his medical situation. It's Joe's opinion that his Sleep Apnea chronic condition disrupts his ability to perform a major life event (i.e, that of sleeping). Since due to family reasons, he can't change to 2nd or 3rd shift, he's requesting an accommodation from the company to work from 8:30am - 4:30pm.

Your skepticism kicks in, and you're pretty sure Joe just wants to get his kids on the bus in the morning.

Question 1: Take 400 words to share your next steps, insights to what the interactive process might look like, potential solutions, etc. Be sure to ultimately answer the question of: Is Joe's accommodation request reasonable? If so, why? If not, under what grounds (undue hardship, essential function, or coworker displacement) would you claim and justify unreasonability?