Is religion question OK on job form?

Byline: ON THE JOB by Dan Grinfas For The Register-Guard

Q: I'm wondering about a couple of the items that appear on our job application form. Our Catholic church operates a summer camp, and we're starting to take applications for camp counselors. One question on the application asks the candidate to "comment on how the Lord has been working in your life over this year," and another question asks the applicant to `discuss your conversion and/or Christian experience."

Are we allowed to ask those questions? Can we require that our counselors be Christian?

A: Maybe. Oregon and federal civil rights laws generally prohibit employers from making employment decisions based on religion, age, race, sex or other protected classifications. So in most cases, it's inappropriate for an employer to elicit or use information about an employee's religion in making a hiring decision.

Of course, if your church were hiring a priest, you could require that the priest be Catholic rather than Muslim, since religious affiliation would be a bona fide occupational qualification for the job.

That wouldn't be the case if your church were hiring a janitor whose employment was unrelated to the religious purposes of the institution.

You'd risk a religious discrimination claim if, say, you were to turn away a Jewish candidate with excellent references and 20 years of janitorial experience in favor of a Christian applicant with lesser credentials.

According to ORS 659A.006(2), an Oregon civil rights law, your church camp may give preference to an applicant belonging to your religion if "such a preference will best serve the purposes" of the church or institution, and if the employee's job is "closely connected with or related to the primary purposes of the church or institution."

In assessing the validity of the application questions you mention, it would be important to know whether your camp counselors merely organize softball games or whether their job description involves imparting your church doctrine to the children attending the camp.

The law indicates that if your church camp were a "commercial or business activity" without a "necessary relationship" to the church or its primary purposes, it wouldn't be appropriate to consider an applicant's religion.

Q: We fired one of our field technicians for gross insubordination, and he's very upset with us at the moment. He still has a lot of our property, and he's threatening to "donate it all to Goodwill." Do we have the right to hold money out of his final paycheck (or hold the entire check) if he doesn't return our equipment?

A: No. The Oregon law that permits certain deductions from an employee's paycheck, ORS 652.610, doesn't allow for deductions for things such as till shortages, property damage, theft or property loss.

Despite this employee's misconduct (or charitable urges, depending on how you look at it), the law requires you to pay him on time. That means you should make his final paycheck available by the end of the next business day after the discharge and pay for all of his hours of work.

If the employee refuses to return your property, you could file a criminal report with the police or you could sue the employee in court, obtain a judgment against him and garnish his wages with a subsequent employer.

There is a bill before the Oregon Legislature, House Bill 2767, that would amend the Oregon deduction statute to allow a deduction "in a reasonable amount determined by the employer" for a loss or damages from "theft by the employee in the course of employment."

But as the law reads now, you'd risk hefty final paycheck penalties if you were to deduct from or delay this employee's final check.

On The Job is written by attorney Dan Grinfas of the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries. Contact BOLI at [phone], or BOLI, 800 N.E. Oregon St. No. 32, Portland, OR 97232.