Saturday September 15, 2018
By JAMES ANDERSON
DENVER — A big U.S. meatpacker has agreed to pay $1.5 million to 138
Somali-American Muslim workers who were fired from their jobs at a
Colorado plant after they were refused prayer breaks, a federal
anti-discrimination agency said Friday.
Cargill Meat Solutions, a
division of Minnesota-based agribusiness company Cargill Corp., also
agreed to train managers and hourly workers in accommodating Muslim
employees’ prayer breaks at its Fort Morgan beef processing plant, the
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said.
Wichita,
Kansas-based Cargill denies wrongdoing but agreed to settle to avoid
further litigation, the federal agency said. The dispute dates back to
the firings of the workers in late 2016 after management rescinded
policies allowing Muslim employees to take short breaks for prayer.
In
2017, the agency found that the workers had been harassed and
discriminated against for protesting the unannounced policy change that
denied them opportunities for obligatory prayer. Hundreds of
Somali-Americans work at the plant in Fort Morgan, northeast of Denver.
In
a related announcement, a Teamsters union local that was supposed to
represent the workers will pay them $153,000 to settle discrimination
complaints.
The federal agency said it determined that Teamsters
Local Union No. 455, based in Denver and in Fort Morgan, failed to
advocate for the Muslim workers in their dispute with Cargill and even
harassed them because of their race, religion and national origin. The
workers were dues-paying union members.
Union officials denied
wrongdoing. But the local unit agreed to pay the workers, undergo
training in handling grievances, and publicize employee rights to be
free of discrimination based on race or national origin.