Dive Brief:
- Amazon allegedly failed to accommodate a deaf employee and fired him based on false accusations he assaulted a co-worker, according to a lawsuit filed Oct. 28 in a California federal district court (Colburn v. Amazon.com Services LLC).
- The employee, who was in his 60s, worked at an Amazon warehouse in Stockton, California, the complaint alleged. He claimed that despite his repeated requests, Amazon failed to provide him with an American Sign Language interpreter for staff meetings, daily workplace communications and essential training. He also alleged that nothing was done when he reported to HR and to his supervisor that a co-worker called him “too old” and said that he needed to “wait, be patient and learn first.”
- Amazon allegedly terminated the employee without explanation, according to the lawsuit. He discovered from documents it submitted to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that it fired him for purportedly violating its code of conduct, after a co-worker allegedly spread false rumors that he assaulted and threatened the co-worker, the complaint said.
Dive Insight:
The employee sued Amazon on several grounds, including for allegedly violating the Americans with Disabilities Act by failing to accommodate his disability and retaliating against him for requesting accommodations.
He also alleged that Amazon discriminated against him because of his age, in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. Amazon did not respond to a request for a comment.
Employers know that reasonably accommodating disabled employees is at the crux of the ADA, but they may not understand how broad the obligation is.
The EEOC explains in a guidance that the ADA requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations, absent undue hardship, “so that employees with disabilities can enjoy the ‘benefits and privileges of employment’ equal to those enjoyed by similarly-situated employees without disabilities.”
This includes training, the EEOC says, and the agency has been persistent in enforcing employers’ duty to reasonably accommodate deaf or hard-of-hearing employees so they can effectively receive the training the employer provides.
Last year, the EEOC sued Walmart for violating the ADA when a Kansas store, citing affordability concerns, allegedly refused to provide two deaf employees access to ASL interpreters during orientation and safety-related meetings, causing the employees to miss out on critical information communicated verbally, the lawsuit said.
In July, Didlake, a nonprofit government contractor, agreed to pay more than $1 million, in part to settle allegations it refused to provide ASL interpreters to deaf and hard-of-hearing janitorial workers so they could understand and participate in training sessions, mandatory safety meetings and one-on-one meetings with management.
In both cases, the employees had to rely on a co-worker or manager who wasn’t qualified to interpret for someone whose hearing was impaired, according to the EEOC. This fell short of meeting the ADA’s accommodation obligation, it said.
Even an employee who can read lips to communicate individually with co-workers should be given a certified sign language interpreter, absent undue hardship, for large-group conferences, EEOC says. This is because it’s not possible for the employee to use lip-reading when people not in their line of sight are speaking, the EEOC advises in a guidance about hearing disabilities.
Employers also have to be careful when they use written communications as an accommodation. In the Walmart case, one of the employees was notified of a mistake in an unclear write-up, leaving the employee unable to understand how to prevent future discipline, the EEOC alleged.
In the Didlake case, providing written handouts for meetings didn’t meet the ADA’s accommodation requirement, EEOC said, because the handouts were difficult to read and didn’t convey everything that was presented.
The warehouse employee in the Amazon lawsuit alleged that he was initially compelled to rely on a hard-of-hearing co-worker for training who wasn’t qualified to interpret for him. When he was provided with an ASL interpreter for other training, a co-worker kept distracting him from using the interpreter’s assistance, the suit alleged.
The employee also alleged that Amazon suspended him and initiated an investigation without telling him why. It notified him of these actions through a video remote interpreter, but when Amazon representatives began speaking to the interpreter, the interpreter stopped interpreting for him, creating the impression they were selectively sharing information, according to the complaint.
“Moreover, Amazon did not arrange a meeting with Plaintiff to clarify the grounds for his termination, nor did they provide an ASL interpreter during this process,” the lawsuit said.
