Somali meatpacking workers complain of religious harassment

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By OSKAR GARCIA / The Associated Press

OMAHA, Neb. — An American-Islamic advocacy group has drafted a complaint to federal officials that is awaiting the signatures of dozens of Muslim Somali workers who allege they were fired or harassed by supervisors at a Grand Island meatpacking plant for trying to pray at sunset.

The complaint from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, to be filed with federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission officials, compiles testimony from at least 44 workers who say they quit or were either fired or verbally and physically harassed over the prayer issue.

The complaint alleges that breaktime rules at the Swift & Co. plant violate civil rights laws by not allowing workers to leave production lines to pray at sundown.

The sunset prayer, known as the maghrib, is the fourth of five daily prayers required of all Muslims.

Jama Mohamed, 28, said he was fired from the Swift plant in June for leaving a production line to pray. He said supervisors would not allow him a break.

“Some of them took the (prayer) mat from me; they started shouting, they started telling me to stop it, and one of them grabbed me by the collar of my shirt,” Mohamed said through an interpreter.

“I was crying at the time this was happening to me, and when I finished I told them while they were doing that I was in the middle of a prayer.”

Mohamed said he was then called to an office where a supervisor fired him.

The Somali workers had planned to sign the complaint during a meeting Sunday, but that was changed to a later date.

The complaint reprises issues that boiled over in May when 120 Somali workers abruptly quit for similar reasons. About 70 of them returned to the plant a week later, but union officials worried the issue would resurface as sundown inched later each day through the spring.

“For three days it was all good and we were praying — there was no hassle, no interference, nothing at all,” said Ali Schire, 30, who said he returned to the plant but was later fired for trying to pray.

“All of a sudden after three days it just all got loose, and they were suspending people, they were firing people,” Schire said through an interpreter. “Some of the people even had to give up praying at all for fear of being fired.”

Later sunsets run past breaks allotted in the union contract meant to keep workers from long stretches on production lines.

An employment attorney for the Greeley, Colo.-based Swift said that unscheduled breaks can force unplanned shutdowns of lines.

“That is a significant number of employees, and there is not much of a way to accommodate that consistent with keeping the production online,” said Donald Selzer, a Minneapolis-based attorney.

But workers and Muslim advocates say Somali workers have since been fired on the spot for praying while others have been made fun of for the way they prayed.

Mohamed Rage, chairman of the Omaha Somali-American Community Organization, said: “They are treating (the Somalis) like criminals now — anyone who prays is a criminal.”

At least two dozen workers had been fired since May by Swift for praying, he said, but Swift disputes the number.

Selzer said only three Somali workers were fired for reasons relating to the issue, and for walking off the line without permission, not for praying.

“These people are absolutely entitled to pray, and they should not be interfered with for doing so,” Selzer said. “But on the other hand, the only situations that I’ve been made aware of are people that walk off the job without permission, and that’s a different kind of an issue.”

The president of the local union that represents workers said he had not heard of many Somali workers being fired or harassed since May.

Dan Hoppes, president of Local 22 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, said he sees regular lists of people who are fired from the plant. Nothing in those lists raised his suspicions, he said, but added that the plant — which employs about 3,000 people in all and about 150 Somalis — generally has very high turnover.

He couldn’t file a grievance in some of the cases because prayer breaks are not part of the contract, Hoppes said, but he plans to revisit the issue with plant officials when the contract is renegotiated in 2010.

A Chicago-based staff attorney with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Rima Kapitan, said Swift has been “unwilling to work with us to create a solution where the workers can pray.”

Kapitan said Swift rejected her group’s suggestion to allow the Somalis who work evenings to leave in smaller shifts to avoid disrupting lines. The five- to 10-minute sunset prayer must be done within a 45-minute window surrounding sunset, according to Muslim prayer rules.

Selzer and Hoppes said the company suggested phasing evening workers to shifts earlier in the day that did not interrupt prayer times.

“We’re perfectly happy to try to pursue that angle so that we don’t have this conflict,” Selzer said. “But given the people who are on the second shift — many of whom prefer to be there — this sort of presents the operational realities.”

Somali workers also complain that other workers are regularly granted breaks to use the bathroom or to smoke and that prayer time should be granted in the same way.

Selzer said Swift supervisors can allow unscheduled breaks only for workers to use the bathroom and only if it does not interfere with production lines.

Workers are told to use the bathroom during their scheduled breaks, and some who routinely ask for breaks are reprimanded for abusing the unofficial policy, Selzer said.

Muslim advocates say requests for workplace accommodations of Muslim religious obligations have become common around the country.

Mohamed said it is important for Muslims to pray within scheduled times and not to postpone prayers or say them early.

“I would never forgive myself and God would not forgive me if I do not pray on time because I want to earn some money,” he said.