Around 200 employees of a meat packing plant have lost their jobs after they had a dispute with the management which was in connection with their offering of prayers at work.
These Muslim workers, majority of whom are Somalian immigrants, work in Cargill Meat Solutions in Fort Morgan, Colorado and they chose to walk out citing the reason of insufficient accommodation of prayer time.
Since 2009, the organization has provided the Muslim workers with a “reflection room” but now they have alleged that the policy has been changed.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations claimed that the Muslim workers were treated in a “discriminatory manner” and told “If you want to pray, go home”.
The spokesman of council, Jaylani Hussein, said, “All of these employees are good employees and don’t have any other issues. They feel missing their prayer is worse than losing their job. It’s like losing a blessing from God.”
However, the organization that has 1,55,000 employees in 68 countries has said that there is no change in the policy of allowing time for prayer and all this is a “misunderstanding”.
The company’s spokesman told that a meeting took place between the plant managers and workers, Somali community members, union leaders but the issue was not resolved.
The spokesman also stated that the workers were told that their jobs would be at risk if they remain absent for straight three days and as 200 workers didn’t show up, they were terminated.
“Cargill makes every reasonable attempt to provide religious accommodations to all employees based on our ability to do so without disruption to our beef-processing business,” as stated by the spokesman.
Spokesman further added, “At no time did Cargill prevent people from prayer at Fort Morgan. Nor have we changed policies related to religious accommodation and attendance. This has been mischaracterised.”
Denver Post was told, “It’s an unfortunate situation that may be based somewhere in a misunderstanding. There has been a desire among some employees to go in larger groups of people to pray. We just can’t accommodate that. It backs up the flow of all the production. We have to ensure food safety. We have to ensure the products we produce meet consumer expectations.”