A Muslim advocacy group is trying to mediate a solution to a weeklong confrontation between Somali workers and a meatpacking plant over when they can break for prayer, a spokesman for the group said Thursday.
Religious tension between U.S. factories and Muslim workers is nothing new, but a spokesman for the D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations said he’s never seen a conflict escalate to the point it has at the JBS Swift & Co. meatpacking plant in Greeley, where several dozen workers were fired Wednesday.
“Usually in these cases we’re able to come to an amicable solution,” said Ibrahim Hooper, a CAIR spokesman.
Swift announced the terminations in an e-mail Wednesday. Swift spokeswoman Tamara Smid said 101 workers were fired, but United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 spokesman Manny Gonzales said the number was as high as 150, based on what workers told union officials.
Gonzales said the union plans to file grievances against the company on behalf of those workers.
The conflict began Friday, when about 220 workers, according to Swift estimates, walked out during the evening shift, blaming the company’s refusal to allow their breaks to coincide with sunset so they could pray.
Hooper said the timing of the sunset prayer for Muslims is the only one of the five daily prayers that can’t be changed.
“You can’t really say, ‘Well I’ll delay it for an hour and do it then.’ You have a very narrow window of opportunity,” Hooper said.
During the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, workers can’t eat or drink until that prayer, he said.
Hooper said CAIR attorneys in Chicago are now involved as mediators, and may pursue legal action if religious accommodations are denied. But they’re hoping it doesn’t get to that point.
“Really, you don’t need attorneys in these cases,” Hooper said. “You just need a spirit of good will and cooperation.”
Smid said Swift had changed the timing of worker’s lunch schedules by more than an hour to accommodate them. She said the assembly line usually breaks at 9 p.m., and that schedule was changed to 8 p.m.
She said workers who were suspended for walking out of work Friday were told that if they didn’t return to work on Wednesday they would be fired.
The Greeley plant was where 270 Hispanic employees were detained after a raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in 2006. Paul Stein, coordinator for the Colorado State Refugee Services Program, said the raid created a vacuum filled by Somali refugees. Stein said data from six months ago show that about 500 refugees from the war-torn country either work or live in Greeley and Fort Morgan.
Swift, which was purchased by Brazil‘s JBS SA in March, has had problems with Muslim workers in the past. At a Swift plant in Grand Island, Neb., dozens of workers from Somalia quit their jobs last year because they said they weren’t allowed to pray at sunset. They eventually returned to work.
This month, officials at the Tyson Foods Plant in Shelbyville, Tenn., reached a compromise with union workers to observe Eid al-Fitr as a paid holiday. The day, which falls on Oct. 1 this year, marks the end of Ramadan.
The firings in Colorado came on the same day as Gold’n Plump Poultry Inc. in Minneapolis agreed to let Muslim workers take short prayer breaks under a settlement mediated by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.