Publications

Hi everyone. I'm Andrew Yacyshyn employment attorney at Tannenbaum Helpern. As businesses are reopening and returning their employees to the workplace, they are likely to encounter requests from employees to continue working from home or for some other form of accommodation due to the coronavirus pandemic, and it could be for any number of reasons the employee may have an underlying medical condition or might be pregnant. The employee might be an older individual the employee might live with an individual who is at higher risk for severe illness due to COVID-19. The employee may have childcare needs or the employee may just have a generalized fear of contracting the virus at work or while commuting to work. So this presents an important question, which is what is an employer's obligation to provide an accommodation to these employees? Well of course it's going to depend on the specific circumstances. So let's take the employee who has an underlying medical condition or who might be pregnant. So each of Federal New York State and New York City law required employers to provide reasonable accommodations to employees with covered disabilities. In New York State and New York City each have laws that require accommodations for certain pregnancy related reasons. So this means when it comes to an employee who has a medical limitation or a limitation due to their pregnancy the employer must engage in an interactive and cooperative dialogue with the employee to determine if there is a reasonable accommodation that can be provided for the employee to overcome that limitation and continue performing their job, so that accommodation could be continued remote work. But it could also be something else the employer will satisfy its obligation by providing an effective alternative accommodation to the employee. So please stay tuned we are going to be putting out additional videos on employer obligations to provide accommodations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thank you.