A New Brighton factory is the latest Twin Cities employer to confront employment issues related to Muslim workers and their religious requirements at a time when the area’s population of Islamic adherents — and employees — is increasing.
Mission Foods, whose parent company is Irving, Texas-based food giant Gruma Corp., became the subject this week of a complaint filed with both the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Minnesota Department of Human Rights; one of the two agencies will investigate the allegations of employment discrimination based on religion.
Six female Somali production employees claim their badges were taken away and they were asked to leave company premises May 5 after they refused to wear a new pants-and-shirt uniform. The women, who dress in traditional Islamic robes and head coverings, consider such form-fitting attire an insult to their faith, which encourages women to cover all parts of their bodies and hair, according to the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MN).
In a general statement, Mission Foods said no one had been fired for uniform-related violations. A spokeswoman said the issue is about safety.
The women, who reside in Minneapolis and nearby suburbs and range in age from young adulthood to middle-aged, had worked at Mission Foods between six months and a year without problems related to dress, said Valerie Shirley, a spokeswoman for CAIR.
A new human resources manager, who started in February after being transferred from another company location, brought with her a strict uniform policy that led to the May 5 confrontation, Shirley said.
“Upon hire, at least two of the women were told the clothes that they wore to the interview would be fine for their position,” Shirley said. “When the new human resources manager came on, the women were told they would need to wear a shirt and pants.
“The women feel there is something else at play. There is the general feeling that they are being treated in this manner because they are Muslim and their modest attire is a constant reminder that they are Muslim,” Shirley added.
CAIR, which states that it advocates for and educates about Islam, has been criticized by the Anti-Defamation League and called extremist by some groups for its position on Israel and alleged support of non-peaceful intervention. Supporters of CAIR, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the California Council of Churches, have defended the group, saying it is a much-needed protector of civil liberties for a minority group.
The Muslim women in New Brighton package tortillas for Gruma, which operates 19 plants throughout the U.S. and is a major supplier of tortillas here and to Latin America.
Bettie DeBruhl, senior vice president and general manager with Houston-based PR firm Stevensfkm, which is handling media inquiries for Mission Foods, said the issue was 100 percent about safety.
In its written statement, Mission Foods said that “no employees have been terminated by the company, nor have they had any disciplinary action taken upon them ... for failure to comply with uniform policy.”
The statement also says “protecting our employees and preserving the integrity of our products is of utmost importance to Mission Foods. We follow rigorously and to the letter of the law — both state and local — OSHA federal laws governing safety, as well as MNOSHA, the Minnesota state law governing safety.”
CAIR, which has been in touch with its national group on the controversy, says safety is not the chief issue because the employees did not operate machinery.
“They all sit around the table and package the tortillas,” Shirley said.
CAIR says it has asked the company to reinstate the women to their jobs and sit down with the group and the employees to create a satisfactory approach to accommodate their religious needs within the intent of the law, Shirley said.
In its statement, Mission Foods added that while the women’s jobs are available to them, the positions cannot remain open indefinitely because of production needs.
Federal law requires employers to make reasonable accommodations for employees’ religious needs, including clothing as well as time and space for prayer as needed, as long as it does not place an undue hardship on the company or its profits.
“I don’t think [prayer time or prayer-related policy] has ever really been established,” Shirley said. “This whole situation is about a lack of education surrounding religious accommodation needs and Islamic culture.”
It’s not the first time such conflicts have surfaced in Twin Cities workplaces — and with a growing Muslim population as well as other trends related to employment complaints, it’s unlikely to go away.
Estimates of the area’s Muslim population range from 30,000 to more than 130,000.
Several years ago, the Bloomington facility of Arlington, Texas-based LSG Sky Chefs, an in-flight catering company, bowed to pressure from CAIR-MN and 50 Muslim women and changed its pants-and-sports-shirt uniform policy to allow Muslim women the option to wear skirts.
Last year, Target Corp. moved some Muslim cashiers to other jobs because the employees claimed scanning pork would violate their faith. In 2006, Muslims petitioned the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport to establish a prayer site; the request came after a high-profile incident involving the removal of several imams from a U.S. Airways flight in Minneapolis.
In 2005, an Arden Hills electronics company disciplined or terminated about two dozen employees for breaking the company prayer policy by praying too long or at the wrong times.
Nationally, the number of employ-ment-related legal cases filed by Muslims has increased significantly since Sept. 11, 2001, and especially last year, according to Jeffrey Breinholt, past deputy chief of the Justice Department’s Counterterrorism Section.
Muslim employment-discrimination cases were at “an all-time high in 2007,” he said in a report, at 69 (four in state courts, 65 in federal). No figure was available for prior years.