Ramadan redux in Greeley: JBS, East Africans search for common ground

The solemn prayer goes up as the sun sinks into the late-summer horizon. The Muslim on bended knee gives deep reverence to Allah and will, to end more than 13 hours of fasting, take a bite of date and a sip of water.

The meatpacking plant, meanwhile, is a whir of around-the-clock machinery as workers chop and guide steer carcasses along hooks and conveyors. Production lines are no-nonsense places in a volume-oriented industry where profits ride on how fast each animal is slaughtered and packaged.

For a Muslim worker, despite how inhospitable a meatpacking plant is to prayer, the sundown homage must occur each day during Ramadan. Muslims don’t eat or drink during daylight hours in the holy month, breaking the fast after sunset prayers.

“Prayer is a lot more crucial in the month of Ramadan,” said Nimaan Ali, a Somali and former employee of JBS USA in Greeley. “If you don’t pray, you’re basically fasting for no reason.”

The welter of Islamic faith versus industrial commerce flared at JBS USA last September when about 230 Muslim workers walked off the job for evening prayers. They said they hadn’t got word that the company had pushed a previously agreed-to prayer time back 30 minutes. Some workers said supervisors locked them out of bathrooms and stopped them from using drinking fountains.

A similar walk-off occurred at the company’s Grand Island, Neb., plant, resulting in the firing of more than 100 Muslim workers in Greeley and about 90 in Grand Island.

Complaints of religious discrimination and harassment were filed in Colorado and Nebraska and remain under Equal Employment Opportunity Commission review. Depending on those findings, legal action could be taken by the EEOC.

Since last September, JBS officials have met repeatedly with Muslim workers and union representatives to hash out issues. A company official said JBS has made progress and is making religious accommodations where possible.

Meanwhile, the Muslim employees say not much has changed inside the plant. They steadfastly place God before work and will be looking for a quiet place to pay sunset homage when the hot August sun sets this Ramadan.

It remains a heated conundrum of cultures, languages, and labor and safety issues with no easy answers. It’s anyone’s guess whether the religious observance will be a flashpoint of worker unrest again this summer.

More clear is that fissures run through the growing polyethnic mix at the meatplants. Raul Garcia, a veteran of the Grand Island plant, said a few fights have broken out between Latinos and Somalis. In Greeley, Alberto Trujillo, who came here 20 years ago from Chihuahua, Mexico, and put in a stint at the meatpacking plant, calls the East African workers “whiny.” He’s resentful that Mexican immigrants face a costly and time-consuming process to become legal workers, while the Africans — it can take a couple of years to get refugee status — arrive eligible to work.

Trujillo spoke while playing pool with a few friends at a downtown Latino bar.

“They can take their own time to pray, but you have to follow the rules,” he said. “And why give (Muslim workers) special preferences? As soon as they get here they don’t have to worry about their papers, right?”

Gerardo Hernandez Marquez, another Chihuahua native and former meatplant worker, carried that point further: “The Cubans barely get into the water and put one foot on this country and they’re good.”

A couple pool tables away, a group of refugees from Eritrea, another East African nation, complained that the plant is a difficult place for African workers because they aren’t hired into supervisor positions. Those jobs are held primarily by Latinos, they said.

One of the Eritreans, Azmera Gebregirgs, 26, said he got beat up by a couple of Latinos when he left the bar late at night a few months earlier. He only comes to bar now with a group of African friends.

Latinos greatly outnumber the Africans in the bar on this afternoon. The groups stick to themselves.

Marquez cast a wary eye toward the Eritreans and said, “As long as they don’t mess with us, we don’t mess with them.”

Since last September’s drama, a group of African refugees joined together to open the East Africa Center. The downtown center, which is getting help from community volunteers to apply for nonprofit status, offers English classes and support services to Greeley’s East African population, estimated at 1,000 and growing. The center has conducted outreach sessions across Greeley and hosted several meetings between JBS and Muslim workers. Helping people to understand their religious practices, history and customs is important to the Muslims, who say their culture values family, friendship and mutual respect.

Asad Abdi, vice president of the center, feels progress has been made at JBS and in the greater community. He believes a more conciliatory tone will greet this Ramadan, which begins Aug. 21, following the Islamic calendar.

“I’m pretty sure it will be different from the last one,” Abdi said. “What makes things hard is the nature of the job and different religions and different people working together.”

Inside the Greeley plant, Muslim workers have been given a place to thoroughly wash, which is custom before prayers.

That’s not quite enough for Maryan Muse, a 20-year-old Somali refugee. Muse, who remains hopeful a solution can be reached, is one of three Muslims who are union representatives at the Greeley plant.

“They gave us a place to wash up, but they didn’t give us a place to pray, so what’s the point of having them?” Muse said.

Little else has changed, but both company officials and Muslim workers are cautiously optimistic that last year’s fracas won’t repeat.

Chandler Keys, spokesman for JBS USA, said he’s not sure what to expect during the holy month. “We think we’ve made progress, so we hope the prospect of (a walkout) is very minimal.” JBS and other companies that hire refugees into entry-level jobs — often the most-viable work option for non-English speakers — face a learning curve in dealing with the new languages and religions practiced by multiracial workers. Greeley’s JBS plant this year began hiring Myanmar refugees, who are mostly Christian.

There are now about 300 Myanmar refugees on the afternoon-to-evening shift, the same shift that a year ago was largely staffed by Muslims from East Africa. The entry-level jobs pay about $12 an hour.

Denver attorney Diane King is representing 95 of the fired Muslim workers from Greeley. She believes her clients have a solid case and should be entitled to compensation for lost wages after being released.

“I would hope that (JBS) behaves much better this go-around, but I don’t have any faith that they will,” King said. “The big key is they needed to accommodate the prayer at sundown, and my understanding is they still haven’t.”

Federal law prohibits discrimination based on religion. It requires employers to “reasonably accommodate” workers’ faiths, except to the extent that doing so would create undue hardships, such as sacrificing safety or efficiency.

Keys said JBS has had “productive and comprehensive talks” with Muslim workers and their needs have been met where possible.

“That’s what our whole goal is,” he said.

Complaints of workplace religious discrimination are on the rise nationally. The EEOC received 3,273 complaints in 2008, up from 2,880 the year before. Complaints by Muslim workers more than doubled in the past decade — from 285 in 1998 to 668 in 2008. The statistics are for discrimination charge filings, not lawsuits.

The EEOC hasn’t conducted studies on the reasons for the increased religion bias filings, said spokeswoman Christine Saah Nazer, but “we can speculate that it is due to more religious diversity in the workplace — especially with the increase in the immigrant population.”

The law states employers can’t intentionally go after workers of certain religions, said Collin Mangrum, a law professor at Creighton University, in Omaha, Neb. Employers must make an effort to accommodate different religions when allowances are consistent with job-related responsibilities, he said.

Mangrum said that if a company restricts a religious practice for safety matters, for example, it is likely safe from legal challenges.

Raul Garcia, a 17-year worker at JBS’s Grand Island plant, said Muslim workers’ demands for prayer breaks are unrealistic and unfair.

“Let’s say you are on a table where we are cutting meat — there were six people and three of them are Muslim and the other three are Latinos. The supervisor won’t slow down the chain when the Muslims are going to pray,” Garcia said. “Is it fair that I have to pick up their job and they get their paycheck complete, while I do the work they were supposed to do?”

That is one of the issues that company and union officials must tangle with when looking at Ramadan.

Local UFCW officials did not respond to interview requests, but a national spokeswoman said she’s not aware of any further issues regarding religious accommodation at the Greeley and Grand Island plants.

“The UFCW’s job is to make sure the contract is enforced in any plant and to make sure that all workers are treated fairly,” Jill Cashen said. “We work through our contract language to accomplish that.”

Nazer said the EEOC only gives details about specific cases if it files a lawsuit, which is usually a last resort. The agency first tries conciliation between the employer and worker.

However, there are recent instances of companies losing in religious discrimination suits:

» A Phoenix jury in June 2007 awarded $287,000 to a Somali worker. The EEOC charged that Alamo Car Rental committed post-9/11 backlash discrimination when it fired the woman for refusing to remove her head scarf during Ramadan.

» In December 2008, Merrill Lynch paid a $1.55 million settlement to an Iranian Muslim who was fired due to his religion and national origin.

Also last year, Gold’n Plump Inc. settled a lawsuit with a group of Muslim workers in Minnesota. The employees said the chicken processing plant didn’t accommodate their prayer schedule and they were required to handle pork, which is against their religious practices.

Mangrum, the law professor, said the facts of each case pertaining to JBS will determine if reasonable accommodation was made by the company.

Most of those fired left town to seek work elsewhere. Some ended up taking jobs at Cargill Meat Solutions in Fort Morgan. Cargill, which also employs hundreds of East African refugees, didn’t have problems during last Ramadan. The company doesn’t have a specific place inside plants for Muslim workers to pray, but “if an employee wants a quiet place to go and pray, for any faith, we can make that accommodation,” said Rebecca Hayne, Cargill spokeswoman.

Garcia, the Grand Island JBS plant worker, said he feels the Muslim workers are making unreasonable demands.

“We in Latin America celebrate our Holy Week and Easter, and if we ask for a Thursday or Friday off because of it, (the company) would say, ‘If you don’t come to work you don’t have a job anymore,’ ” he said. “We would be kicked out of our jobs. I guess that is why the company didn’t give them that chance, since in that case they should make that available to everyone.”

Garcia, 64, said Latino workers are “more of a humble kind” who “suffered a lot” to get to the United States.

“We earned everything by working hard,” he said. “These Somali workers feel empowered because the government brought them and automatically they get all these prerogatives.”

Others feel it’s a misperception that the East Africans — Greeley is also home to Eritreans, Cameroonians and Ethiopians — want special treatment.

“We’d hope that JBS as an employer would make the accommodations as necessary,” said Nicole Hurt, director of the Colorado Progressive Coalition’s northern Colorado office. “I feel it’s important for every culture in a workplace to be respected.”

Ali, who briefly worked at JBS last winter, is aware of the pressures inside the plant.

“The (production) chain keeps moving,” said Ali, a senior at the University of Northern Colorado. “There has to be people up there. I can kind of understand the company’s frustration” if workers leave the line.

He said the end-of-fast prayer takes only five minutes, but the employees need additional time to remove work equipment, go pray and return to the production line.

If the plant allows workers to leave in increments around the time of their second break — the lunch break — it should resolve both company and Muslim workers’ needs, Ali said.

Currently, second-shift workers get a short early break and a longer lunch break roughly five hours into the shift. When Ramadan begins in late August, the sun will set about 7:50 p.m., meaning that one of the regular break times would have to move to coincide with sunset.

Abdi, the East Africa Center official, said the Muslim workers don’t need much time.

“If the Muslim people get that 15 minutes at the right time, they’re not going to complain,” he said.

Around town, the East Africans and Latinos self-segregate, as ethnic groups tend to do. A couple of African specialty stores have opened, and there’s a restaurant that features East African food. Meanwhile, there are countless Mexican markets and restaurants.

But in the packing plant, the cultures are thrown together.

Muse, the union representative, said she’s aware of a second-shift supervisor who is from the Middle East, but she doesn’t know if he’s Muslim.

Ali said there’s a “major communication gap” at the plant, made worse by the lack of East Africans in management.

“If a Somali (worker) wanted to let out their frustration they would just use the little English they know,” he said. “They wouldn’t be fully understood as they would be if there was a Somali manager. … The one thing the company can do for their own benefit is to get somebody who can communicate with the large proportion of Somalis.”

This problem was illustrated at a legal seminar held last week by the Volunteer East Africa Support Group at UNC. A Muslim JBS worker said she’s been repeatedly pulled off the line by her Spanish-speaking floor supervisor. The floor supervisor takes the woman to another Spanish-speaking supervisor, who has twice written the Somali up for performance problems of which she has no understanding.

The Somali woman only knows that if she’s written up a third time she’ll be fired.

George Price, a Denver attorney who offered legal information during the two-hour seminar, said the woman needs to talk with the plant’s human resources official. It’s the company’s responsibility to give work assignments in an understandable manner to all workers, he said. “If discipline is being issued for matters that aren’t understandable, then that’s a problem.”

The biggest issue remains time for prayer, said Graen Isse, a Somali and former JBS employee.

To the Muslims, if they don’t pray at the end of their purifying fast, they’ve failed to get closer to God. By fasting, the faithful believe they have past sins forgiven.

Isse said he knows Muslims at the Cargill plant in Fort Morgan who say they don’t have a problem getting prayer breaks, even during the sacred month, which ends with the daylong celebration of Eid Al-Fitr.

It’s yet to be seen if a compromise is found in Greeley, where tensions still linger between Muslim and Christian workers.

“I feel management should take care of both,” Isse said. “They should satisfy both.”