EEOC: Employer Agrees to Improve Process of Designating Worker as Safety Threat Under ADA

Employers can’t simply assume that when something happens at work that causes an employee to go to the emergency room that the employee is a safety risk.

Rather, analyzing whether an employee is a safety risk requires employers to use the best available medical information to evaluate the seriousness and likelihood of any risk.

That’s the lesson from today’s EEOC announcement that it settled an ADA lawsuit against Rexnord Industries LLC, a Wisconsin-based company. According to the lawsuit, the employer violated the ADA by firing an assembler at its Stearns Division in Cudahy, Wis., because it regarded her as having a disability after two unrelated incidents which ended in ambulance trips to the hospital.  It acted without conducting the requisite safety risk assessment, the commission charged.

To settle the lawsuit the company agreed to pay $25,0oo to the former employee,  remove from her file any reference to the termination of her employment; train its human resources staff on the ADA and the ADA-required process to designate an employee as a direct threat to safety; and keep records of its direct-threat designations.

This blog was highlighted in the March 7 weekly roundup of the Ohio Employer Law Blog.