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Swift dispute has deep roots
(Greeley Tribune (CO) (KRT) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Sep. 14--The summary of events reads like the setup for a global comedy of manners.
For more than a week, primarily East African Muslim workers at the meatpacking plant in north Greeley have squared off against largely Latino workers with JBS Swift & Co., which is owned by a Brazilian family, caught in the middle of a religious-inspired dispute.
The punch line, however, has been no joke. The dispute has lasted more than a week, seen more than 100 workers fired and both sides have traded accusations of abuse and threats of violence.
Below the surface, however, simmers a broader cultural clash that touches the core of what it means to work in America -- even in a small city like Greeley -- in an ever more interconnected world.
"Greeley still has a small-town feel," said Keiko Krahnke, an associate professor of management at the University of Northern Colorado. She also is the special assistant to UNC President Kay Norton for diversity. "In many ways, we can't stay that way anymore."
Krahnke said she likes Greeley's small-town atmosphere, but the dispute at Swift is one indication the city is changing.
"It's inevitable that we have to become more cosmopolitan," she said. "We really do need to learn from other people. We do need to have a dialogue."
The confrontation at Swift first came to the surface on Sept. 2 when Muslim workers on Swift's second shift couldn't break at 7:30 p.m. The next day, a large number of Muslim workers gathered outside the human resources office at Swift while their leaders negotiated an accommodation with managers that appeared to allow the workers to take a break at 7:30 p.m. as required by the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. This accommodation sparked several rounds of protests and counter-protests on the part of largely Latino and Catholic workers.
Graen Isse, a former Swift worker who has worked as a translator in the past and speaks for many of the Muslim workers, said the dispute is the result of a cultural and verbal misunderstanding. He said the Muslim workers struggle to communicate with their supervisors at the plant. He said many of the Muslim workers also struggle to understand the U.S. culture. He said many workers did not think it would be a problem to take a prayer break at 7:30 p.m. during Ramadan.
Deep roots
The conflict at Swift is not unusual. Companies across the country in nearly every sector of the economy -- and even the U.S. military -- have struggled to accommodate diverse religious beliefs without offending Christian workers in the process.
The conflicts have their roots in the changing demographics of the United States, the changing role of the workplace in society and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid on the Swift plant in Greeley.
Georgette Bennett is president of the Washington, D.C.,-based Tanenbaum Center for Intereligious Understanding, which specializes on religion in the workplace. She said complaints of religious-based discrimination in the work place have risen faster than any other category during the past decade.
"I think religion, over the past 12 years, has emerged as a work-place issue for a number of reasons," Bennett said.
Demographics play the largest role. In 1970, about 4 percent of the U.S. population was foreign-born and of that number, more than 60 percent came from predominantly Christian Europe. The 2000 census showed the foreign-born population had grown to about 12 percent. More important, the majority of those born in another country came to the U.S. from Latin America, Asia and Africa. When they come, many bring religious practices and beliefs that fall well outside the predominantly Christian U.S. mainstream, Bennett said.
"You have a lot of Muslims coming in, and you have a lot of Sikhs and Hindus and members of what are minority religions in the U.S., but which are not minority religions elsewhere," she said.
The changing demographics of the U.S. work force also plays a more subtle role in fostering religious disputes in the workplace.
"The second major factor we're looking at that impacts on this is the aging of the population," Bennett said. "The older people become, the more important religion becomes to them."
In the U.S., there is a shortage of workers in the traditional working-age group of about 19-50.
One solution is older workers, another is the use of H1B visas, which allow skilled workers to immigrate to the U.S. for their contribution to the workforce, Bennett said.
In Greeley, the work force shortage had another impact. Swift faced an ICE raid in 2006 in which 262 Latino employees were rounded up. The percentage of Latino workers at the plant then dropped to about 80 percent from 90 percent of the company's total workforce. The disruption of the raid, coupled with the addition of 1,300 jobs on the second shift, opened the doors in 2007 for African refugees, who are legally here and eager to find work.
Working together
With the myriad factors pushing religion into the workplace, finding a way to work together presents unprecedented challenges.
The nature of the work done at Swift, and other meat packing plants, adds to the difficulty. Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, said of the hundreds of religion-in-the workplace disputes the organization works to resolve every year, the most difficult come in production-line settings. He said the need to keep the line moving often makes it more difficult to work out solutions than it would be in an office setting.
Amin Kazak, a professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies at the University of Colorado-Denver, said he thinks a middle ground can be reached between Swift and the Muslim workers.
"The workers have to be flexible," he said. "Not jeopardize the ritual and spirit of Muslims, and not jeopardize also the other workers' rights and so on."
Kazak said company managers should be aware of the significance of Ramadan to Muslims. Tradition mandates they break the fast at sunset because "it's a spiritual thing. It's very significant for the Muslims to do that."
He said Muslims honor God by breaking the fast -- even if only to take a drink of water -- at sunset.
Kazak said the compromise reached by JBS Swift to allow an 8 p.m. break time seems reasonable, provided that at sunset the Muslim workers could at least pause for a drink of water or possibly a quick snack.
Hooper said the sunset prayer is often the most difficult to resolve because the prayer must happen at a specific time. He said with the other required prayers throughout the day, there is more leeway.
While JBS Swift's efforts to accommodate Ramadan did not achieve their desired effect with many of the Muslim workers, they also sparked discord among the non-Muslim -- primarily Christian -- workers at the plant.
Former Swift worker George Pruner of La Salle, said he quit his job on Thursday because of the way Swift handled the Ramadan situation. He said the tension has affected the atmosphere inside the plant, and he does not think Swift should have accommodated the Muslim workers.
"I can understand from their viewpoint, but if you're going to take a job in another country, you've got to respect their rules," he said.
Pruner said regardless of religious affiliation, it can be hard to get an unscheduled break while working on the line. He said even bathroom breaks require a supervisor to fill in for the person who takes the break. When the scheduled break doesn't come at the mid-point of the shift, it makes an already difficult job painful.
"We just want our break at the right time," said the self-described moderate Christian. "It's just long if you don't get your break. You get tired, your back hurts. That's a long stretch."
Bennett, from the Tanenbaum Center, said this reaction is common in such disputes. She said a branch of the U.S. military -- she wouldn't say which one because she can't disclose organizations that come to the center for help -- struggled to contain this "Christian backlash" to religious accommodation policies.
Swift spokeswoman Tamara Smid said via e-mail the company works to accommodate diverse religious practices and foster understanding.
"We have a JBS Work Environment Training program, and we will be looking at the program to see where improvements can be made," she said. "There are things to learn from each experience we encounter as an organization."
Kazak said despite an apparent incompatibility with the West, Islam does not preclude integration. He said he thinks the Muslims coming here respect the United States for its many freedoms.
"This is a diversity of cultures and faiths, and (Muslims) are going to get along with other cultures and understand it rather than leave it to circumstances of what's happening today to color it," Kazak said.
The road ahead
Despite the challenges, disputes like these are nearly always resolved in a mutually satisfactory way, Hooper said.
"In these situations, the best prescription is open communication, honest communication and a spirit of mutual cooperation," he said. "A mutually agreeable solution can be worked out."
Bennett said there are best-practices for companies when it comes to working out religious disputes. She said pro-active management and fostering discussion are foremost among them. She said many companies have had success with things like shift swapping to allow workers who need a religious holiday, or time off, to have that time and trade with others who might want a different time off for their religious practice. However, making accommodations work is more art than science, she said.
Bennett, from the Tanenbaum Center, said it is important for companies to allow different religious groups to learn from one another. She said most of the workplace religious stem from misunderstanding.
Even amid conflict, the different groups need to communicate, Bennett said. Some businesses have held forums to allow the members of the minority religious groups to explain what they believe and why. She said this usually benefits all the religious groups in the workplace.
"The most powerful antidote to stereotyping and suspicion is contact and communication," she said.
-- Tribune reporter Chris Casey contributed to this report
How the dispute developed
This is a timeline in of the major events in the dispute.
-- Sept. 1: The first day of Ramadan also was the Labor Day holiday.
-- Sept. 2: When workers returned to Swift, the second-shift Muslim workers asked supervisors to be allowed to pray at 7:30 p.m., sunset, and break their fast as part of their observance of Ramadan. That request was denied, Muslim workers say.
-- Sept. 3: Muslim workers gathered outside the plant at the start of their second shift at about 3:30 p.m. while leaders negotiated a break time with JBS officials.
-- Sept. 4: The United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 filed a grievance over JBS Swift's decision to move the break time. The union said the contract signed in 2004 spelled out specifically when breaks could come during a shift.
-- Sept. 5: Non-Muslim workers protested outside the plant, claiming that moving the second-shift lunch break up from its usual time of about 9:15 p.m. was a violation of their contract. JBS officials said they compromised with the time of the break and moved it to about 8 p.m. About 220 Muslim workers walked off the job that night saying they were not allowed to pray at 7:30 p.m. Some Muslim workers maintained the break needed to be at 7:30 p.m.
-- Sept. 9: Talks between JBS officials and leaders for the Muslim workers broke down. A mid-afternoon meeting between the Muslim representatives and about 80 of the workers grew heated in a downtown Greeley park when the representatives relayed information to the crowd.
-- Sept. 10: Between 100 and 150 workers who had failed to come back to work after walking off the job on Sept. 5 were fired by JBS. Officials said the actions by the workers were in violation of their collective bargaining agreement.
-- Sept. 11: The dispute took an ugly turn when someone left fliers on tables in the plant cafeteria. JBS officials confirmed there were inappropriate materials left at the plant and they were investigating the source. The fliers showed pictures from a protest where people held signs that read "Behead those who insult Islam," for example. The fired Muslim workers held a "low-key" day in observance of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
-- Sept. 12: While the fired Muslim workers stayed home and observed Ramadan, the union filed grievances against JBS Swift on behalf of the fired workers. The grievances were for discrimination and wrongful termination, the union said.
-- Sept. 13: Representatives of the fired Muslim workers met at the Union Colony Civic Center. Some of the fired workers are considering legal action against JBS.
The significance of Ramadan
Fasting, as in Ramadan, is considered one of the five pillars of the Muslim religion. The five pillars are:
-- The Declaration of Faith: This consists of a two-sentence declaration. Council on American-Islamic Relations spokesman said the sunset prayer is usually one of the most difficult needs to accommodate in the hundreds of religion in the workplace cases the organization deals with every year. He said there is not much flexibility on the part of the Muslim workers about that prayer because it must be done at sun down. He said this is even more acute during Ramadan when it also involves breaking a daylong fast.
-- Prayer: Muslims perform five obligatory prayers each day. Islamic prayers are a direct link between the worshiper and God. Islam has no hierarchical authority or priesthood. A learned Muslim chosen by each congregation leads the prayers.
-- Zakat: One of the most important principles of Islam is that all things belong to God and that wealth is held in trust by human beings. Zakat, or charitable giving, "purifies" wealth by setting aside a portion for those in need. This payment is usually 2.5 percent of one's capital.
-- Fasting: Every year in the Islamic lunar month of Ramadan, Muslims fast from first light until sunset. The fast is another method of self-purification.
-- Pilgrimage: A pilgrimage to Mecca, or Hajj, is an obligation for those who are physically or financially able.
Source: Council on American-Islamic Relations
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Copyright (c) 2008, Greeley Tribune, Colo.
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