The Philadelphia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations,America's largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization,announced yesterday that it has filed a discrimination suit againstWhole Foods Market for allegedly creating such a hostile workenvironment for a former Muslim employee at its Philadelphia Art Museum area location that he was forced to prayoutside the building by the dumpsters."In 2010, Whole Foods became the first national supermarket chain tohave a ‘Ramadan Promotion’ targeting Muslim customers,"CAIR-Philadelphia Civil Rights Director and staff attorney AmaraChaudhry said in a statement. "A company that works so hard to attractMuslim customers should be similarly welcoming of Muslim employees, andwe are willing to hold them accountable for the representations theymade to our community.”The suit, filed in Philadelphia's Court of Common Pleas last week,alleges that when former Whole Foods employee Glenn Mack Jr.'s supervisor learned of Mack'sIslamic religious beliefs in October 2010, Mack was subject to a hostile work environment that eventually led to his termination.According to the complaint, supervisor Sara Perlstein, one of two Whole Foodsmanagers named in the suit, "pestered" Mack for details of an 18-dayvacation he was taking in the fall of 2010 that was in line with Whole Food's policy and hadalready been approved.The day after a co-worker revealed to Perlstein that Mack was using hisvacation time to take a religious pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia,Perlstein allegedly called Mack into her office and told him that hecouldn't go due to an "informal black out policy" prohibiting employeesfrom using vacation days in November and December. Mack said it was thefirst he heard about the rule.In addition, the suit claims that Perlstein toldMack during the same meeting that she "couldn't guarantee" his job when he came back and said when he returned, he would be placed on an on-call, temporary "seasonalstatus" without benefits.After Mack returned from his pilgrimage, he went to the second WholeFoods employee named in the suit, Jamie McFadden of the company's HumanRelations Department, asked why he had been placed on seasonal statusand said he believed he was being mistreated because he had gone toMecca, according to the complaint.Human Resources claimed that it returned Mack to full-time employment, but Mack says he never received his benefits.Mack said that his work environment then became hostile.Perlstein and other co-workers allegedly followed Mack to a storage areaduring his scheduled breaks, where they would "heckle" him ashe prayed. As a result, he began praying by the dumpstersoutside the supermarket.Perlstein allegedly called Mack in February 2011 and told him he wasfired for attendance reasons, but the suit claims his termination wasactually due to religious discrimination. He soon learned he was banned by Whole Foods corporate offices from working at any Whole Food location, according to the complaint.In mid-2011, Mack was contacted by two Whole Foods locations in Wynnewood and Devon that were interested in hiring him, as Whole Foods has an internal policy that all employees fired for attendance reasons are eligible for re-hire six months later.Mack was twice interviewed at the Wynnewood location and received a phone call offering him a position set to start in early November. But the day before he was scheduled to begin, Mack got another phone call from the store notifying him that corporate headquarters had indicated he was "banned" from all Whole Foods positions in all locations, the complaint alleges.A similar thing happened with the Devon Whole Foods location, according to the suit. After the store manager told Mack "an interview would be a formality" and that he "just needed to check with corporate" before giving Mack a start date, Mack was again notified by telephone that he was ineligible for re-hire at any Whole Foods store.Mack is suing for alleged religious discrimination, retaliation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. He is seeking compensation for pay and benefits he would have receivedhad he not been terminated, damages for emotional distress and painand suffering and punitive damages for Whole Food's "willful, deliberate, malicious and outrageous conduct." The suit also seeks to prohibit Whole Foods from maintaining its alleged illegal policy or practice of religious discrimination in the future.“Employers need to be tolerant of the religious beliefs of theiremployees," attorney Richard Swartz said in a statement. "In this lawsuit, Mr. Mack alleges that Whole Foods was not,and that Whole Foods retaliated against him when he complained about theintolerance.”
