Why can't we all just get along?

Pitcher Sandy Koufax unanimously won the Cy Young Award in 1965. When his Los Angeles Dodgers team won the National League pennant that year, Koufax was the obvious choice to be the starting pitcher in Game 1 of the World Series against the Minnesota Twins. But Koufax told the Dodgers he couldn't pitch that day. Why? Because he was Jewish and the day in question was Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. The Dodgers honored this request.

I bring this up because there are organizations that respect the religious beliefs of their employees, but, unfortunately, there are those that don't. From my personal experience, the City of Dallas seemed to fall into the first group, although appears that might not be the case with all its departments, especially the much-criticized Code Compliance Department.

It appears Code hired a woman then scheduled her to work on Saturdays. She told them her beliefs as a Seventh Day Adventist, which, like Judiasm, observes Saturday as the Sabbath, precluded her from working on Saturdays. The department's response was to fire her.

Now it probably didn't help her cause any that this employee, Marilyn Ford, was fired once before for allegedly falsifying code department records, but she appealed that ruling and got her job back. But Code's decision to put on a Wednesday through Sunday work schedule smacks of retaliation ("We have to take you back, but we're going to make sure you're not going to like it.") Code told her you either work this schedule or they would fire her again. She filed a grievance, the city denied the grievance and, in the process, terminated her again.

As a result, she filed suit against the city. Somewhere along the line, wiser heads prevailed in the City of Dallas when the decision was made not to fight this battle. (I am not going to speculate on whether that decision was made for economic or religious reasons. I'll leave that for the conspiracy theorists). At any rate this appeared as Item No. 3 on today's Dallas City Council Consent Addendum:

"Authorize settlement of the lawsuit styled Marilyn Ford v. City of Dallas, Cause No. 3:05-CV-1676-D - Not to exceed $55,000 - Financing Current Funds."

No council member removed it from the consent addendum so it passed today without debate. According to the Dallas Morning News account, she was also reinstated to her Code job and given a shift that does not include Saturdays, which is what should have happened at the very beginning of this sorry espisode. Now it's time to deal with the person really responsible for all this, the individual in Code who chose not to respect Ms. Ford's religious beliefs.