In Fort Morgan, Colorado, 130 former employees at a Cargill meatpacking plant are suing the company for religious discrimination, says The New York Times. In December, the Somali-refugees claimed that managers at the plant announced that they would be severely limiting prayer breaks, which had previously been allowed once or twice during a shift with permission from a supervisor. The company denies any such rule change, but 150 workers walked out in protest and were promptly fired by Cargill for leaving their posts.
For its part, Cargill says that it “worked hard to accommodate Muslim employees since they began arriving in 2005, setting aside two cubicles for prayer and granting a “vast majority” of break requests,” reports the Times. But when 4,500 cattle have to be slaughtered and broken down every day, scheduling 10-minute slots for prayer is difficult.
“Occasionally, there are times when staffing limitation does not allow granting of prayer requests,” Mike Martin, a company spokesman said. This is not the first time that a meat company has been hit with a worker prayer dispute. JBS is facing similar charges over a 2008 conflict at its Greeley, Colorado plant.
Before the lawsuit, many Somalis considered working at the Cargill meat plant “a path to the American dream,” says the Times. As long as workers were okay with cutting carcasses in frigid temperatures for 8 hours a day, the job paid $14 an hour and didn’t require much English. The meat plant used to hire mostly Mexicans, Vietnamese and Central Americans. But after immigration raids forced many of them to leave, Africans have taken their place. There are currently 1,000 Africans living in Fort Morgan, a town of 12,000 people.