Moral Accommodations: Tolerating workplace misconduct due to a disability

This webinar is presented by IHSP Disability Working Group

Speaker:

Adi Goldiner, PhD
King's College London

Description:

The right of disabled people to reasonable accommodations/adjustments in the workplace is a common feature of disability antidiscrimination legislation. This talk focuses on what Adi Goldiner calls workplace 'moral accommodations', namely the right that employers tolerate employees’ otherwise unacceptable behaviour when it is due to some underlying impairment. The need for this type of accommodations arises often (but not only) when people with mental disorders experience difficulties in regulating emotional responses or reading social cues in work situations. As a result of their impairments, employees might engage in workplace misconduct—be it angry outbursts, inappropriate emails, or threats to co-workers—which provides a just cause for termination. Instead of dismissal, moral accommodations mandate tolerating their misconduct, through allowing job transfers, granting 'second chances', or providing exemptions from certain workplace conduct rules.