Plan to Extend Job Harassment Rule to Religion Draws Fire : Employment: Federal panel is deluged with letters from people fearing a ban on discussions in the workplace. Officials say they are just trying to clarify existing law.

They ar rived by the thousands-- letters, postcards, handwritten notes on loose-leaf paper. Some bore biblical passages. Others featured pictures of flowers or clouds.

And almost all of them--nearly 56,000 at last count--asked the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to scuttle its proposed guidelines defining religious harassment in the workplace.

“I implore you, please come to your senses and DROP this item of consideration as ‘harassment,’ ” wrote Alice Mahaffey of Warrior, Ala. “You are overstepping your area of expertise.”

“Quite frankly, I think you have gone off the deep end,” said John Alquist of Charlotte, N.C.

“It is unnatural for people not to talk about politics and religion, even in the workplace,” Alquist wrote. “If you can stifle religious discussion, will political dissent be next? Besides, who gave you the right to suspend the 1st Amendment anyway?”

The EEOC says the draft guidelines issued in October were merely an attempt to interpret and explain existing law.

“The purpose of the guidelines was not to create any new legal theories or in any way abridge the exercise of free religion in the workplace,” commission spokesman Reginald Welch said.

Nevertheless, the proposed guidelines triggered protests from people fearing that they would create “religion-free work zones,” or mandate freedom from religion instead of freedom of religion.

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“I am guaranteed freedom to practice my faith so long as it does not hinder the freedom of others to practice theirs. Or not to practice,” wrote Don and Kathy Fredrickson of Gladstone, Ore.

“If I want to read a Bible at work, during a break, I should be allowed to do so and I should also be allowed to keep it on my desk at work,” wrote Paul John Steinbart of St. Louis.

The controversy erupted last fall after Atlanta labor lawyer Dudley Rochelle began advising her business clients that the only way to avoid religious harassment lawsuits under the guidelines would be to eliminate all religious expression from the workplace.

Church groups quickly got involved, deluging congressional offices and the EEOC with letters and telephone calls.

More than 130 House members have co-sponsored legislation to require the EEOC to remove religion from its harassment guidelines. The Senate voted 94 to 0 on June 17 to urge the EEOC to rewrite the proposed guidelines.

The resolution, sponsored by Sen. Howell Heflin (D-Ala.) and Sen. Hank Brown (R-Colo.), also asks the commission to make clear in any new guidelines on workplace harassment that religious symbols or expressions of religious beliefs are not restricted and cannot be used to prove harassment.

As originally drafted, the guidelines define unlawful harassment as any verbal or physical conduct that “denigrates or shows hostility or aversion toward an individual because of his/her . . . religion . . . or that of his/her relatives, friends or associates.”

Welch said they will now be redrafted to address the concerns of the people who made comments. He gave no timetable and said the new version might be published for public comment before the commission takes final action.

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But the commission is not inclined to drop religion from the guidelines.

“To not speak to the fact that religious harassment does occur would perhaps elicit the comments and concerns of many of the same people who are saying it shouldn’t be there,” Welch said.

Many who wrote to the EEOC voiced surprise that anyone experiences religious harassment in the workplace.

“There is so little record of this kind of harassment . . . that the time and taxpayer money you’ve spent to investigate and propose this thing is ridiculous,” wrote Philip Hall, president of Tropical Screw Products Co. in Miami.

Indeed, the numbers of religion-based complaints filed with the EEOC has been small: 1,386 out of 72,120 complaints filed in the 1992 fiscal year, and 1,449 out of 87,887 last year, spokeswoman Hope Williams said.

But of several hundred complaints examined by Associated Press, a handful mentioned firsthand knowledge of what might be considered religious harassment.

“I know from experience when another person is constantly preaching their religious beliefs and/or is trying constantly to get you to go to church over and over, even when you keep saying no,” wrote Sue Peters of Sheboygan, Wis. “It is very harassing and really does create an unhealthy and hostile environment.”