Swift caves to Somali demands at Grand Island, NE plant

Thanks to Blulitespecial for being on top of the news again.   Swift has given in to demands by Muslims at its Grand Island meatpacking facility and will shift break times to allow Muslim prayers.

OMAHA, Nebraska — A meatpacking plant has agreed to accommodate Muslim workers’ request for prayer time during Ramadan, union officials said Wednesday.

Earlier this week 300 Muslim JBS Swift & Co. workers, most of Somali background, walked off the job in protest of the prayer dispute. No one was fired after the protest.

Dan Hoppes, president of the local United Food and Commercial Workers Union, said management at the plant has agreed to temporarily change the timing of the second-shift lunch break to accommodate workers wanting time to pray during the Muslim observance of Ramadan.

I’m sure we will learn much more tomorrow.  It will also be interesting to see if Somalis in Greeley, CO will roll the Swift plant in that city as well.

If you are new to this story, go to our category Greeley/Swift/Somali controversy here and catch up if you can!

Another Presidential campaign tip from the Immigration lawyers

Well here you go, another “comment” from Immigration lawyers and how they see the 2008 Presidential campaign.  And, although yesterday they said that McCain would more likely take on immigration “reform” in his first year, they are still in the tank for Obama.

This is what they say Obama should do.  He should focus on the Hispanic vote in Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada—the states this group claims are the swing states.

In that case, here is what I say.  All of you voting Hispanics in Colorado consider that if Obama should win the Presidency you can bet, and take it to the bank, that the number of African immigrants will dramatically rise and they will be competing with you and blaming you, Hispanics, for their trouble in the workplace—just as they are today in Greeley, CO.

Graen Isse, Somali mouthpiece in Greeley is moving on up

Don’t you just love how refugees and immigrants can move on up in America.  This is such a wonderful country, don’t you think? Truly the land of opportunity!  Here is a case where all it took was being the mouthpiece for fired Somali workers in Greeley, CO and presto, off the meat slicing and dicing line and into the Court House.

Graen Isse came to our attention as one of the community organizers in the Greeley/Swift-bad meatpacker-fires-poor-Somalis story still on-going in that city.   He was prominently on display in a news film linked in this post (hope the link to the film works for you).

Isse is also the guy who told the Arab press that the Hispanics are to blame.  And, as far as I can tell, no American publication has mentioned that fact, while they have made him their go-to guy in Greeley.

On hearing that the Somali workers in Grand Island, NE were protesting too, he lamented:

Graen Isse, one of the workers fired by JBS Swift in Greeley last week, said he was saddened by the Grand Island news.

“I’m feeling bad. I don’t want anybody to be facing unemployment,” Isse said Tuesday. “I want them to have their jobs and support their families.”   [boo-you know what-hoo!]

And, these reporters obviously eat this up quoting him extensively.  Oh, brother!

Isse says:

— Graen Isse, one of the workers fired by JBS Swift in Greeley last week for what the company called an unauthorized walkout during their shift, said 121 workers at the Greeley plant were fired by the company on Sept. 10. He said virtually all of the workers applied for unemployment benefits on Monday and Tuesday, working through union representatives in Greeley. He said the workers also will file for hardship benefits through the union.

— Isse said six more Muslim workers were fired at the Greeley plant Monday for taking breaks to pray around sunset. Tamara Smid, a spokeswoman for JBS Swift, said via e-mail Tuesday afternoon she had no knowledge of more terminations.

— Isse said some of the fired Muslim workers in Greeley met with a representative of the U.S. Department of Justice. “They’re trying to negotiate with the company,” he said of the federal official.

— Isse said some of the fired workers planned to meet again with an attorney Tuesday night to discuss potential legal action against JBS Swift and their options for getting their jobs back. The group also met with a union attorney over the weekend.

— Isse said most of the fired workers have remained in Greeley. “I’m not going nowhere. I like Greeley,” Isse said, noting that he had an interview this week with the Weld County Courthouse to work as a translator.

Ahhhhhh!   And, now they are going to give him a job as a translator in the Courthouse!   Isn’t America just grand!  Will there be a movie offer next?

Gates of Vienna: probing the infidel world

Baron Bodissey at Gates of Vienna blog today analyzes what is going on in Greeley, CO and Grand Island, NE and concludes that what we are seeing with Somali demands for accommodation of Islamic practices in the workplace is a continuation of a worldwide phenomenon—probing the infidel world to see how far they can get with each new step toward establishment of Sharia law.

Last Saturday I wrote about the Ramadan demands (and subsequent firings) of Somali employees at a JBS Swift plant in Greeley, Colorado. Last night I wrote about Muslim probes of the infidel world, and the fact that they are going on all the time, even if we don’t recognize them.

Today these two topics have converged. Once again, it involves Somali employees at a JBS Swift plant demanding prayer privileges for Ramadan. This time the aggrieved employees are in Grand Island, Nebraska.

Read on.   His excellent analysis brings to light an earlier probe in Grand Island where Swift backed down, and so he concludes:

JBS Swift made concessions, and that’s why the Somalis are back with another demand. There will always be another demand, until full sharia is instituted in Nebraska, and the green flag with the crescent and star flies over the state house in Lincoln.

That’s the way these probes work. The ratchet turns in only one direction.

To learn more about what is happening in Greeley, CO and Grand Island, NE see our category with posts in chronological order here.

Also, I will continue to remind readers that the US State Department has brought over 83,000 Somali refugees to the US in the last 25 years with the larger number of them coming since 9/11.

New category for Greeley/Swift/Somali controversy

Never dreaming that the controversy over religious accommodation for Muslim workers at a Greeley, CO meatpacking plant would develop into such a lengthy news story, I didn’t think to set up an entire category for posts on that topic. 

Just now I did create a special category so that readers could trace all the way back to July 2007 for our reporting on Greeley, CO and the Somali refugees that have migrated there.   The category has 23 posts here for your reading pleasure, if you are energetic enough to plough through them!