Suffering an injury on the job can cause many setbacks. In some cases, the resulting injury could lead to a person’s continual suffering and development of a disability. Whether a disability is temporary or permanent, employers commonly have an obligation to provide reasonable accommodation to disabled workers. If they do not, legal claims for disability discrimination may be warranted.
New York readers may be interested in a lawsuit that a worker in another state filed in hopes of receiving compensation after being forced to miss work for a year. The man is a flight attended for Delta Air Lines, and he suffered a foot injury on the job during a rough plane landing. He took leave from work, but the injury continued to cause him problems after he returned to work. As a result, his doctor wrote him a note indicating that he needed medical shoes.
He provided the request to his employer in 2017, but it was denied. As a result, he could not work. Later, Delta requested more information regarding his condition and accommodation, so the man gave medical information and a shoe proposal. However, Delta again rejected the proposal because the shoe’s leather was not smooth enough. The man received a rejection for another proposal, and in 2018, Delta finally approved the man’s first suggestion, which allowed him to return to work.
Typically, as long as a request for an accommodation does not impede work operations, employers should provide that accommodation. If requests are denied or other actions are taken to make a job unnecessarily difficult for a person with a disability, those actions could constitute disability discrimination. New York workers who believe that they have been mistreated on the job due to disabilities may want to discuss their situations with employment law attorneys.