You're correct that any employee who decided to not answer their phone for a period might attract the same displeasure, but we have laws in the US that protect people who are observing religious holidays and he was, in fact, observing one. I guess Yelp could argue that his observation was unreasonably extreme, but that seems unlikely to pass muster.
Do we?
From: https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/FAQ_Holidays.htm
> California law does not require that an employer provide its employees with paid holidays, that it close its business on any holiday, or that employees be given the day off for any particular holiday
https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/religion.cfm
"The law requires an employer or other covered entity to reasonably accommodate an employee's religious beliefs or practices, unless doing so would cause more than a minimal burden on the operations of the employer's business. This means an employer may be required to make reasonable adjustments to the work environment that will allow an employee to practice his or her religion.
Examples of some common religious accommodations include flexible scheduling, voluntary shift substitutions or swaps, job reassignments, and modifications to workplace policies or practices."
No employer is required to approve PTO for religious holidays if something needs to get done.
There are tons of employees who get scheduled to work on Christmas all the time.
It seems pretty clear that if the employer expects response in a certain time frame, the employee is engaged, and there may be issues even for salaried overtime-exempt employees with keeping an employee engaged 24/7/365.
Saying you were observing a religious holiday will definitely earn you sympathy from the public but probably not legal relief from the courts.
https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/wysk/workplace_religious_...
>Examples of common religious accommodations include:
>a Catholic employee needs a schedule change so that he can attend church services on Good Friday
Is being out of contact for 12 hours on Good Friday an "undue hardship" for the business? I'm not a lawyer but I'm skeptical.
In France it exists since 2001 and had been reinforced by the last labour law. I'm not sure about the actual consequences.
That would make it discrimination. By law, you must recognize and respect a person's religious beliefs in the workplace.
Not caring, is equivalent to saying, "you will be unnecessarily put at a disadvantage at the workplace because of your religious beliefs."
This is incorrect. For example, see title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Religious practices must be accommodated. There are various exceptions, but this is the general rule. There's an enormous amount of case law supporting this. Telling employees that they must be available 24/7/365 is prima facie violation of this law.
Again, "case law" overwhelmingly favors employers here. Here's the EEOC on the matter:
"The law requires an employer or other covered entity to reasonably accommodate an employee's religious beliefs or practices, unless doing so would cause more than a minimal burden on the operations of the employer's business."
A minimal burden is an enormously low requirement.
> Examples of some common religious accommodations include flexible scheduling, voluntary shift substitutions or swaps, job reassignments, and modifications to workplace policies or practices.
Voluntary shift substitutions is a remedy, when combined with other remedies. And even then, it was only held that voluntary shift substitutions aren't solely enough in specific cases and that was decided in January of 2018 in Tabura v. Kellogg.
There is vastly more nuance involved here then "He asked for it off the same day he wanted it off, thus Yelp is in the wrong."
Yelp is a crap company, but that's not the same thing as violating the right to practice religion.