A group of East African residents has begun monthly meetings with Greeley leaders following last month’s dispute about prayer breaks at JBS Swift & Co., and subsequent firing of about 120 Muslim workers.
Five members of the East African Community Council met with social service representatives, Realizing Our Community and Greeley Mayor Ed Clark earlier this week. The next meeting is planned for Nov. 3 at the Greeley Recreation Center.
Members of the East African Council, some of whom tried to mediate the dispute between JBS Swift and the Muslim workers, on Monday gathered information about local education, social service and employment options for the local East African community.
The point of the dialogue with city leaders, said council member Graen Isse, is “so what happened at Swift won’t happen again.”
About 16 of the fired workers got their jobs back at JBS Swift, Isse said, while another 20 found employment elsewhere in town. About 50 to 60 in the group are still looking for work, he said, and they are generally looking for assembly or cleaning jobs where they don’t have to speak English.
Isse said some of the fired workers have retained a Denver attorney, and legal representatives with the Council on American-Islamic Relations have met with the affected Muslims.
The Denver attorney couldn’t be reached for comment.
More than 400 East Africans, mostly Somalis drawn to jobs at the JBS Swift meatpacking plant, have settled in Greeley during the last 18 months. They are legal refugees and can seek work under a United Nations resettlement program.
Their adjustment to Greeley had been smooth until the holy month of Ramadan, in which Muslims fast between sunrise and sundown. Many Muslim workers asked plant supervisors for an earlier “lunch” break on the evening shift to allow them to observe prayers and end of fasting each day. That sparked counterprotests from other workers who argued the Muslims were asking for special treatment.
The company’s compromise break time didn’t come early enough to suit the Muslim workers, and about 300 of them walked from their jobs.
A few days later, on Sept. 10, JBS officials fired 120 of the workers for an unauthorized work stoppage.
Officials with United Food Commercial Workers Local 7, which represents production workers at Swift, said the union would file a grievance for any worker who wanted his or her job back, arguing that the Muslim workers were not given sufficient notice their jobs were in jeopardy.
A few days earlier, union officials filed a grievance saying JBS Swift management sidestepped the union in reaching the compromise agreement with the Muslim workers.
Also, during last month’s dispute, the protesting workers submitted a two-page grievance to JBS Swift officials, saying plant supervisors “are constantly discriminating against Muslims.”
At least 100 East Africans continue working at the plant, though JBS Swift officials this week declined comment on the situation regarding Muslim workers.
Isse, one of the fired workers, said UFCW Local 7 representatives met with plant managers this week, but he had no details of the discussion. Union officials did not return calls for comment.
Also in September, about 300 Muslim workers walked off the job at a JBS Swift plant in Grand Island in protest of the prayer dispute. The company told the Associated Press it terminated 86 of the workers for leaving work without authorization.
A representative with Realizing Our Community, a Greeley nonprofit that coordinates initiatives to make the city more inclusive for minorities, did not return calls for comment about the planned series of talks with the East African council.