Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 03/10/2011 - 11:34
Hello,
I work for an educational institution and my job requires me to be in a on call rotation. I understand and abide with this requirement. My situation is that 2-3 times per month I cannot be on call for certain personal reasons and one of them is a spiritual/religious event that I have to attend. It seems that the current philosophy of management is to find someone to cover for you and if you can't you must stay on call and leave your event. Most of the time I can find coverage but recently there have been a few times where I missed my events.
Can they make me do this? Is there anyway I can push back?
Also being on call means responding to events off-hours and weekends so I'm not at the office working.
Thanks for your help
On-call work during religous ceremonies
Interesting question. In some cases, employers can be prevented from forcing employees to work during religious holidays. However, I'm not aware of a Massachusetts law that would allow you to avoid your on-call responsibilities in order to attend religious events.