Update September 22nd: Somali organizers make threats?
Update September 21st: In my opinion: Somalis overplay their hand.
Update September 20th: The Cubans are being brought in—a multicultural mess indeed!
Update later on the 19th: 150 Somalis quit or fired at Swift.
Update September 19th: Somalis say it isn’t over yet.
Update this evening: Fox News is reporting that the deal is off, no special accommodation after all. I’m sure my steadfast reader, Blulitespecial (who never sleeps), will have more details for us in the morning!
GRAND ISLAND, Nebraska — Managers at a Nebraska meatpacking plant have told Muslim employees, most of them Somali, that shift changes made to meet their prayer demands weren’t working and would be ended.
Update later today: Strike continued today. See photos of workers protesting Somali accommodation.
Last night I told you the decision had been made at the Swift & Co meatpacking plant in Grand Island. The Somalis won when managers decided to give in to their demands for shift changes during Ramadan.
But, now all the other workers of all cultures and nationalities have walked out in protest, just as they had in Greeley, CO nearly two weeks ago. (Hat tip: Blulitespecial)
A compromise reached to accommodate prayer for about 500 Somalian meatpacking plant workers in Grand Island led to a counter protest of even more workers at the JBS Swift & Co. plant Wednesday.
Workers including Caucasians, Hispanics, Vietnamese, and African-Americans walked out after clocking in on the B shift shortly after 3 p.m. [A commenter to this news story says that the Sudanese were not with the Somalis, but with this group of counter-demonstrators]
The objection — a change in the break schedule that leaves B shift workers shorted of hours Monday through Friday and forces them to work Saturday to earn at least 40 hours of pay.
“The Somalians say they can only work three hours after sunset, so we’re supposed to work 7.3 hours a day Monday through Friday,” said Naomi Jakubowski. “We’re supposed to come in and make up the time on Saturday or be shorted at just 36 hours.”
“I don’t want to sacrifice my Saturdays with my kids — and I can’t raise ’em on 36 hours of pay,” she said. “I’ve got rent, food and diapers to buy.”
This article from the Grand Island Independent then describes the shift schedule changes and quotes Dan Hoppes, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local No. 22, as saying:
“This will give them time to pray and satisfy their faith.”
The Grand Island plant employs 2500 workers, according to this news story, and 500 are Muslim.
The multicultural protesting workers, including these women standing up for Hispanics, didn’t mince words.
Bernadino Orellana said the Hispanic workers have staffed the Swift plant for 20 to 30 years. The Somalian workers have come in the last year and changed everything — Swift management has given in to the minority, she said.
“Nobody should have special privileges,” shouted B shift protester Tina Ramirez. “Treat everybody fairly.”
Counterprotesters raised objections Wednesday to a pay raise they say the Somalians were given and were bragging about Tuesday and Wednesday.
Ramirez went on:
Ramirez said Wednesday that the Somalians come late, leave early and take frequent breaks and “drop all the time” in prayer right in front of people, so people are literally tripping over their bodies.
“They don’t do the work and we have to work double,” she said. “It’s not fair.”
[…..]
“Everyone has rights. Be equal. Be fair,” a protester sign stated in the Swift parking lot Wednesday night.
“We all have religion,” Ramirez said. [But, some are more equal then others]
Apparently Somalis claimed, as they had in Greeley, CO, that supervisors physically abused Somali workers and that one male tried to follow a Muslim female to the bathroom. In Greeley, the Somalis charged that men went into the locker room and fondled Somali women’s breasts while trying to remove them from the floor. The Somalis know that these allegations involving their women will inflame their supporters around the world. As a matter of fact, in some parts of the world, the allegation alone would get someone beheaded.
Hoppes said the union is continuing to investigate allegations that some praying workers were kicked by a supervisor and that a male supervisor followed a female worker into a bathroom as she attempted to pray. He said witnesses to those events have not surfaced and Swift is denying either incident happened.
Don’t forget to read the comments to this story, they are pretty hard hitting. One commenter, Thompson, said:
The people at Swift who made this decision are nothing more than COWARDS!!!!
Regular working Americans get this, the seriousness of accommodating and bending over backward to Islamic religious demands. It’s only our elitists running the US government and the media elites who want to dismiss the growing storm by telling us we are a bunch of racist , bigoted, xenophobes. Notice the counter-demonstrators come from all sorts of cultural backgrounds and are of various and assorted colors.
And finally commenter AlwaysaHusker said:
If this is part of the global unity, I don’t want any part of it. You better hold on to your hats, because America is going down.
Just a reminder, the US State Department has resettled over 83,000 Somalis over the last 25 years and dispersed them throughout America.
If you would like to learn how this issue (Somali demands at meatpacking plants) has evolved over the last two weeks go to our special category here. Posts are organized in chronological order from the most recent to the oldest. See “probing the infidel world” here.
Read especially this post which describes how the accommodation of Islamic religious demands is part of the “stealth jihad” to bring Sharia law to America. The Somalis are merely the foot soldiers, the advancing wedge.