A few years ago we created a whole category here at RRW on the Somali demands for special prayer breaks at Greeley’s JBS Swift and Company meatpacking plant (Grand Island, NE was involved too). You can visit that category here.
Some of those fired workers (and frankly agitators) went to the Cargill plant in Ft. Morgan. Here is a story that ran in the Denver Post the same day as everything is peachy with Muslim immigrants in Ft. Morgan, here. You can tell they are working up to “issues” developing there too.
Although Cargill’s Fort Morgan operation has escaped controversy over accommodating the religious needs of its Muslim workforce, an undercurrent of problems exists, according to current and former workers and Somali translators.
Company officials say they respect religious rights and follow the law but cannot undermine a plant that produces 4 million pounds of beef daily.
“We know that some of our employees would like a guaranteed prayer time every day,” said Cargill spokesman Michael Martin. “That is not the legal requirement, and it would be impractical to accommodate this without shutting down the production line.”
He said the company accommodates the vast majority of daily prayer requests.
Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, employers cannot deny a “reasonable” religious accommodation request as long as it does not pose an undue hardship, according to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Muslims pray five times a day at prescribed times that move depending on the sun’s position. That can pose challenges for plants with many Muslim workers. One-fourth of Cargill’s 2,000 workers are Somali, company officials say. [Kind of negates any sympathy one might have for the company when they brought this on themselves by their own hiring practices.—ed]
The number of federal workplace-discrimination complaints filed by Muslims shot up in 2009 and 2010, to almost 800 each year, the EEOC says. Those numbers eclipsed the decade’s previous high mark the year after 9/11.
Then here is a reference to the Greeley mess I referred to in the opening above.
Cargill has avoided the rancor that has plagued JBS Swift & Co. in Greeley and other food plants nationwide. In 2008, about 100 Somali Muslim workers were fired after they did not report to work in protest of Swift’s refusal to give them a prayer break during the holy month of Ramadan.
Agitate, agitate, agitate, year after year. Kind of makes turning to vegetarianism more appealing all the time!