November 30, 2007
Did JetBlue Fire Employee Over Religion?
Over dinner last October, 41-year-old Jerry A. Ojedis told his fellow flight attendants that he was Muslim.
A little over a week later, he was terminated.
The series of events that unfolded after Ojedis' declaration have led him to suspect that illegal discrimination was behind the firing. It began, he claims, with his crewmates giving him "the cold shoulder." Several days afterwards, Ojedis was suspended from duty and forced to undergo an interrogation by the company's corporate security division over his "ancestry, religious beliefs and nationality."
When firing Ojedis, authorities at JetBlue told him it was because he'd "manipulated" the airplane controls during a flight from Boston to Austin. Ojedis, through his lawyer, responded that "he only touched the things the pilot and the co-pilot told him that he could... It was a new airplane, and they were introducing him to it, and everything was under the supervision of the pilot or the co-pilot."
This is hardly the first time that the budget airliner has drawn scrutiny for alleged discrimination. Last August, a Pakistani-born pilot sued the company after it took back a job offer because it considered him a "security risk." More recently, the ACLU filed suit on behalf of a traveler who was prohibited from boarding a JetBlue flight because he was wearing a t-shirt containing Arabic script.
JetBlue hasn't publicly commented on the case, as it's still awaiting litigation.
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