Muslims fired over long skirts, tribunal told

Muslims fired over long skirts, tribunal told

Women say garb posed no risk in UPS delivery plant

Sep 09, 2008 04:30 AM

Dale Anne Freed
Staff Reporter
Nadifo Yusuf lost her job scanning and flipping boxes at the UPS package delivery plant near Jane St. because she refused to hike up her long skirt to her knees, a Canadian Human Rights tribunal has heard.

When Yusuf was hired as a temporary worker on Aug. 27, 2003, she was told not to wear loose clothing, jewellery or hair extensions that could get caught in machinery.

Each day for almost two years, Yusuf, 35, a devout Muslim, wore traditional garb to work – a hijab, headscarf and long loose-fitting skirt – she told a hearing before tribunal member Karen Jensen at a Dixon Rd. hotel yesterday.

Yusuf said she and seven other Muslim female workers always modified their wardrobe somewhat when they arrived at work, tucking in their hijabs and raising their skirts to mid-calf.

But around April 2005, because of a change to the collective bargaining agreement, Yusuf and the others were told their jobs were being changed to full-time unionized positions. So she and her Muslim co-workers applied for the full-time positions, according to an agreed statement of facts.

Yusuf said that was when she was told to hike her skirt to knee-length or face losing her job for safety reasons. Their duties included flipping packages on to a moving conveyor belt and climbing ladders or stairs to get to work stations.

In June 2005, she saw a letter posted near the punch-out cards, requiring women workers “to pull up their skirts.”

“I didn’t believe there was a problem. I was working there two years wearing the same clothes from day one,” she told the hearing, dressed in traditional garb.

Her supervisor told her she was a good worker and punctual, and she was given a reward of Tim Hortons and Wal-Mart coupons on four occasions “for a job well done.”

But Yusuf lost her job on July 13, 2005. The other Muslim women were also let go.

They filed a complaint with the Human Rights Commission alleging that UPS discriminated against them on the basis of religion and gender.

Yusuf, who made $9.10 an hour, told the hearing she felt like UPS was “using” her.

“They throw me out like garbage on the street,” she said, covered head to toe in Muslim dress and at times close to fainting, as she testified on the eighth day of Ramadan that requires fasting from dawn until dusk.

“I was working two years and I became unsafe?” she told the tribunal.

Six of the eight women, all of whom sat through the hearing yesterday, provided UPS with a letter from the Khalid Bin Al-Walid Mosque stating that “the religion of Islam requires all Muslim women to cover her entire body inclusive of the legs, arms, head, ears and neck.”

The letter stated pants would not be acceptable attire for the women.

UPS then requested Liberty Mutual Underwriters Canada to conduct a job hazard analysis and risk assessment of the jobs and concluded that “for health and safety reasons” workers’ skirts should not be longer than knee-length.

Jacquie Chic, a Workers’ Action Centre lawyer acting for the eight women, told the hearing the case is about “Islamophobia” discrimination and the “vulnerability of temporary workers.”

The hearing continues today.

See more on this Topic