OMAHA, Neb.—Not all the workers fired last week after a prayer dispute at a Grand Island meatpacking plant were Somali, a union spokeswoman said Tuesday.
At least 86 people of diverse backgrounds lost their jobs at the JBS Swift & Co. plant last week, said Jill Cashen of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union.
The plant has been caught in a dispute over prayer time, with Muslim workers—mostly Somali—asking for accommodations to break times to allow them to pray at sunset, which becomes particularly important now, during the holy month of Ramadan. Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset during Ramadan.
Muslim workers have walked off the job several times since Sept. 15, and non-Muslims walked off after break times were adjusted to give the Muslim workers time to pray.
The company has since ended the break time accommodations, saying they weren’t working. Company officials have said the firings, which came after warnings, occurred because employees repeatedly left work without authorization.
But Mohamed Rage, chairman of the statewide advocacy group Omaha Somali-American Community Organization, has maintained all the firings affected Somali Muslims. Close to 200 have been fired to date, Rage said Tuesday.
Company officials have confirmed just 86 firings, and a company spokeswoman has refused to provide details.
Cashen said she wasn’t sure whether there had been more firings because the union had not yet seen an updated report on work force numbers.
Colorado-based Swift spokeswoman Tamara Smid did not immediately return a phone call seeking more information Tuesday. She did respond via e-mail to say the plant was operating smoothly.
Though everyone—workers, union officials and plant management—is dealing in relatively “new territory” with the prayer dispute, Cashen said, the meshing of people with different cultures and languages in a meatpacking plant is no new challenge.
“I’m confident we can work to prevent it from reaching a crisis again,” she said.
JBS Swift has disputed the firings were over religion. Employees are free to practice religion so long as it doesn’t violate established rules, their union contract or disrupt operations, officials said in a statement released last week.
In Rage’s view, the company has overstepped its bounds and is infringing on workers’ constitutional rights. He hopes the Nebraska Equal Opportunity Commission, or perhaps its federal counterpart, will step in.
The state commission has said it expects to be doing outreach in Grand Island over the next few weeks.
But Rage said outreach and education will do little good now.
“This is not time for education,” he said. “Abuse has been going on for a long time.”
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