Dress Codes and Arbitration

Personal grooming and dress code issues are not disappearing. Generally, employers attempt to justify rules regarding personal appearance as necessary to promote its image or for health or safety reasons. Employees may find such rules as inhibiting their own notions of personal freedom and expression. An emerging question arising out of such rules is the degree of proof required by arbitrators to establish the necessity for promulgating them. Such proof appears to be more often required in image cases to those involving the safety and health of employees. Public sector and male-female dress code issues are also reviewed in this article. Ο wad some power the gifte gie us To see oursel's as others see us! (Robert Burns) Especia l ly s ince the 1960s, arbitrators have been deciding cases involv ing dress codes , personal appearance requi rements , and discipl ine imposed for al leged violat ions of such dress codes . Whi le the passage of t ime may h a v e d a m p e n e d s o m e of the a rdor or tone involved in these cases , the issues have not d i sappeared [1] . Dress codes have also been at tacked on g rounds such as a l leged violat ions of the U . S . Const i tu t ion or civil r ights l aws [2] . W h i l e no one would seriously quest ion m a n a g e m e n t ' s r ight to adopt and imple­ m e n t reasonable dress requi rements , un ions have somet imes d isagreed wi th the assumpt ions on which such requi rements are based. For e x a m p l e , un ions m a y ques t ion whe the r c lothing-rela ted safety rules are really necessary or whe the r such rules should b e appl ied to even those employees not direct ly affected b y the © 1997, Baywood Publishing Co., Inc. 103 doi: 10.2190/8J6F-R38N-VRC5-LTPY http://baywood.com