A Goldsboro construction company has agreed to pay $47,500 to three laborers it fired for refusing to work on Saturdays, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said this morning.
The EEOC had sued the T.A. Loving Co. for religious discrimination over the dismissal of the three workers. T.A. Loving also has an office in Morrisville.
The employees were fired after they refused to work on Saturdays, citing religious tenets of the Seventh-Day Adventist faith. The church prohibits work on the sabbath, which runs from sundown Friday until sundown Saturday.
The EEOC contended that the construction company could have accommodated the workers' religious needs.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act requires employers to make reasonable accommodations for their workers' religious beliefs unless accommodating the workers would impose an undue hardship on the company.
John Murawski has been a full-time newspaper reporter since 1991, with stints at Legal Times and The Chronicle of Philanthropy (both in Washington, DC), The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Palm Beach Post (in South Florida) before arriving at the N&O in December 2004. At the N&O he covers energy (nuclear, coal, renewable, efficiency), utilities (electric, natural gas, telephone) and telecommunications. His beat includes such publicly traded companies as Progress Energy, Duke Energy, PSNC Energy, Piedmont Natural Gas, PowerSecure International, Tekelec, Cisco Systems, AT&T, among others. You can reach him at 919-829-8932 or 
