Colorado: Meatpacker agrees to pay Somalis $1.5 million in prayer break dispute

I have no sympathy for giant globalist meatpackers because they brought this on themselves when they actively sought out (with the help of federal refugee contractors like Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service) Somali refugee workers.

However, what we increasingly see is an accommodation of Islamic religious practices in the workplace with this settlement and others like it.  CAIR is very happy!

Big Meat! Changing America, one meatpacking town at a time!

 

 

Ft. Morgan Somalis Islamic center
Ft. Morgan has a mosque now.    https://www.denverpost.com/2016/03/19/somalis-struggle-to-make-new-home-in-colorado/

 

From the Greeley Tribune:

DENVER — A big U.S. meatpacker has agreed to pay $1.5 million to 138 Somali-American Muslim workers who were fired from their jobs at a Colorado plant after they were refused prayer breaks, a federal anti-discrimination agency said Friday.

Cargill Meat Solutions, a division of Minnesota-based agribusiness company Cargill Corp., also agreed to train managers and hourly workers in accommodating Muslim employees’ prayer breaks at its Fort Morgan beef processing plant, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said.

Wichita, Kansas-based Cargill denies wrongdoing but agreed to settle to avoid further litigation, the federal agency said. The dispute dates back to the firings of the workers in late 2016 after management rescinded policies allowing Muslim employees to take short breaks for prayer.

In 2017, the agency found that the workers had been harassed and discriminated against for protesting the unannounced policy change that denied them opportunities for obligatory prayer. Hundreds of Somali-Americans work at the plant in Fort Morgan, about 50 miles southeast of Greeley.

The Teamsters union also agreed to pay them, an admission that they too were not happy with the Somali workers and their religious demands.

In a related announcement, a Teamsters union local that was supposed to represent the workers will pay them $153,000 to settle discrimination complaints.

The federal agency said it determined that Teamsters Local Union No. 455, based in Denver and in Fort Morgan, failed to advocate for the Muslim workers in their dispute with Cargill and even harassed them because of their race, religion and national origin. The workers were dues-paying union members.

Union officials denied wrongdoing, but the local unit agreed to pay the workers, undergo training in handling grievances, and publicize employee rights to be free of discrimination based on race or national origin.

[….]

Like other U.S. firms that employ Muslim line workers at meatpacking and processing plants, Cargill managers must balance religious accommodations with demands of processing meat in an operation that frequently runs 24 hours.

Managing possible disruptions not only slow production but can create safety issues for line workers.

Here comes CAIR:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim advocacy group, and Qusair Mohamedbhai, a Denver attorney who represented the workers praised the settlement.

Much more here.

See my Fort Morgan file here.  I visited that small city on my tour of midwestern and western towns and cities disrupted by an influx of refugee workers. I spoke with residents who told me that at one time Cargill paid very good wages, but then discovered the ‘benefits’ of immigrants and refugees who would work for less.

You might want to search RRW for the word ‘meatpackers’ because I have dozens and dozens of posts going back ten years about how BIG MEAT is changing America.

Here is just one post you should see. It isn’t just meatpackers, but others in the food industry, the hospitality industry and other manufacturing companies that drive the US Refugee Admissions Program.

This post is filed in my category ‘Stealth jihad’ for obvious reasons.

Trump Administration brings back concept of immigrants supporting themselves without welfare!

welfare office

Pay attention to this! I don’t know if it would apply to refugees who are eligible for virtually all welfare programs shortly after arrival, but it should.  After all, Senator Ted Kennedy and his pals assured Congress in the 1979 debate leading up to the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980, that we were not going to be importing poverty with the newly formed Refugee Admissions Program.

As longtime readers know, big businesses, which hire refugees at low wages, expect the refugees to be accessing welfare to supplement their income.  So a requirement that they not be using welfare when they adjust their status (like when they apply for citizenship and voting rights!) would be a pretty chilling move on the part of the Administration.

Here is Matthew Vadum writing at the Epoch Times:

Trump Administration May Require Immigrants to Be Able to Support Themselves Financially

 

A long-anticipated plan to enforce provisions in the nation’s immigration laws that require prospective immigrants to be able to support themselves financially—so-called public-charge provisions—might be introduced by the Trump administration this month.

The proposed regulations, defining the phrase “public charge” under Section 212(a)(4) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, may be published this fall, and possibly as early as this month, according to a person close to the rulemaking process of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) who requested anonymity.

welfare use chart
Please note that if the number of refugees seems high to you that this chart, found at James Simpson’s Red Green Axis, includes Asylees in addition to Refugees.

 

Left-wing advocacy organizations have attacked any attempt to formally define “public charge” as being cruel and xenophobic, and aimed at drastically curtailing the flow of immigrants to the United States. But the lengths to which the new regulation will go remain to be seen.

Francis Cissna, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), an agency within DHS, discussed a possible draft of the regulation during an Aug. 15 event at the National Press Club in Washington, hosted by the Center for Immigration Studies.

“The goal is not to reduce immigration or, in some diabolical fashion, shut the door on people, family-based immigration, or anything like that,” Cissna said. “The goal is simply to enforce a ground of inadmissibility to this country that’s been on the books for about 100–well, more than 100 years.

Cissna said the public-charge section in the law, a provision that has “hardly ever been enforced,” states that “an alien who in the opinion of the consular officer at the time of application for a visa, or in the opinion of the secretary of Homeland Security at the time of application for admission or adjustment of status—getting a green card—is likely at any time to become a public charge is inadmissible.”

The phrase “likely to become a public charge” has “never been, as far as I know” interpreted in any regulation, he said. There was an attempt in the 1990s to define the expression, but it was dropped.

Cissna said the administration wants to “issue proper regulations open to full public comment, to, at long last, interpret what that means.”

More here.

Dire warnings at The Atlantic about the imminent collapse of US refugee program

Litany of layoffs!

Priscilla Alvarez writing at The Atlantic runs through a partial list of the nine federal refugee contractors and tells us how many staffers have been fired because of that mean old Donald Trump not sending them enough refugee paying clients.

Miliband in Manhattan
Doing well by doing good! Writer Alvarez features the International Rescue Committee.  Bet she doesn’t know its head honcho, Brit David Miliband, makes a cool nearly $700,000 annual salary.  He won’t be losing his job!

There really isn’t much new here (like so many of the fear-mongering stories the lapdog media is publishing these days, there isn’t much here that you haven’t heard over the last few months), however, it is worth posting for a couple of reasons.

First, we are reminded that the US State Department is rumored to be preparing to cut one of the nine federal contractors completely off the federal dole!

Which will it be?

My guess is that they might cut out the smallest—The Ethiopian Community Development Council.  It surely won’t be the giants: International Rescue Committee or the US Conference of Catholic Bishops!

It could be one of the others (besides ECDC) that is almost COMPLETELY funded by you through your tax dollars.  See the list below.***

Continue reading “Dire warnings at The Atlantic about the imminent collapse of US refugee program”

Portland, OR: Refugee federal funding uncertainty causes Catholic Charities to fire some staff

Well, nothing new there you say! Right!

Portland refugees welcome
One Oregon protesting Donald Trump in Portland, OR in January 2017   http://www.oneoregon.org/who-we-are/

However, a couple of things in this otherwise ho-hum news story make it worth posting.

First, because Catholic Charities of Oregon (a refugee agency subcontractor of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops) isn’t getting in massive new waves of fresh refugee clients, they are focusing on better care for the ones they resettled earlier and that is a good thing.

However, when they list their efforts at job training and mental health counseling it got me thinking—who is paying for that!  

It is probably the taxpayer again, but because Catholic Charities of Oregon considers itself a church they are not required to file an IRS Form 990 so that we could find out exactly how many taxpayer dollars are flowing to them.

We know that in addition to the per head payment resettlement agencies receive from you there are myriad taxpayer-funded grants at the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, grants like this one, that keep resettlement contractors afloat. (I think I need to start having a look at those!)

Require all Catholic Charities to file Form 990s (they aren’t churches!) 

One more of many reforms that Congress (or the President) should undertake is to require these so-called ‘religious’ charities to file Form 990s.  (By the way, some Catholic Charities do file a Form 990, but the one featured at Catholic News Agency does not.)

To see the second reason I’m posting this story, continue reading!

Continue reading “Portland, OR: Refugee federal funding uncertainty causes Catholic Charities to fire some staff”

Refugee contractor, IRC, teams with TripAdvisor to give refugees tourist opportunities for free

I guess this is going to be International Rescue Committee day at RRW (see previous post about filthy rich IRC closing an office in Kansas).

My first thought when I saw this story was that refugee resettlement sure is an industry!  And, my second thought was….

…There must be a lot of low income Americans and military vets who would like free boat tours of the Statue of Liberty and so forth.

The rich IRC gets richer and TripAdvisor gets brownie points (they think!) for their good deeds ‘Welcome Home’ (???) campaign!

From the New York Times:

From TripAdvisor, a Program to Help Refugees Get to Know the U.S.

In partnership with the International Rescue Committee, the Welcome Home initiative will offer tours and activities in New York City and Northern California for recently resettled refugees.

 

Trip Adviser
Interesting isn’t it: Trip Advisor has 3.61 million followers on Twitter, but could only generate 9 retweets in 17 hours for this tweet about their great refugee PR campaign.  Hmmm! Makes me realize I’m not doing so badly on Twitter after all.

TripAdvisor wants refugees to the United States to explore and get to know their new homeland, and the hospitality company’s yearlong Welcome Home campaign aims to do just that: launched last week, Welcome Home gives recently resettled refugees in New York City and parts of Northern California the opportunity to book a tour or activity of their choice through TripAdvisor Experiences, a category that offers travelers things to do in around 1,900 destinations globally.

The International Rescue Committee, a nongovernmental organization that provides services to displaced people globally, is TripAdvisor’s partner in Welcome Home and is responsible for reaching out to newly resettled refugees to tell them about the initiative.

Continue reading “Refugee contractor, IRC, teams with TripAdvisor to give refugees tourist opportunities for free”