http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_page=1208&u_sid=10438723Published Sunday September 21, 2008
Meat plants seem a breeding ground for culture clashes
BY CHRISTOPHER BURBACH
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
Central Nebraska has become the latest stage for an unfolding American drama. Tensions over Muslim workers' request for prayer time erupted into worker walkouts, protests, counterprotests, a brief plant shutdown and employee firings at a meatpacking plant in Grand Island.
The events last week at a JBS Swift & Co. plant echoed a controversy earlier this month at a Swift plant in Greeley, Colo. Each revolved around requests from Muslim workers, most of them Somali refugees, for break time to pray and, during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, to break their daily fast shortly after sunset.
It is a drama that has played out in other places, too. It has played out in different ways and at different venues, but often in meatpacking plants, where many Somali refugees work.
The Grand Island story is still evolving. Hundreds of Muslim workers, mostly Somalis, walked off the job last Monday, alleging they weren't being allowed to pray and break their daily fast.
Emotions were raw last week among workers at the JBS Swift meatpacking plant in Grand Island, Neb., where culture clashes erupted.
The controversy is a complicated one involving religion, culture clashes, refugee resettlement, immigration, union contracts and factory demands in an increasingly diverse American work force.
"As we become more religiously diverse, we're seeing more and more of these kinds of issues that have been happening in other countries," said Collin Mangrum, a Creighton University law professor who last summer taught in Israel about workplace diversity. "We're not as used to it here."
The Grand Island plant and United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 22 announced a compromise that would allow Muslims to take breaks to pray and eat shortly after sunset.
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