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Vol. 71/No. 24      June 18, 2007

 
Nebraska meat packers walk out over prayer breaks
 
BY KEVIN DWIRE
AND JOE SWANSON  
DES MOINES, Iowa—More than 100 workers originally from Somalia, including members of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 22, walked out May 14 at the Swift & Company beef packing plant in Grand Island, Nebraska, to protest company denial of prayer breaks.

About 70 of these workers returned to work May 25 after company and union officials “met with workers and the head of a Somali community group to discuss the conflict between Muslim prayer and workplace rules,” reported the Associated Press May 26. “The company agreed to accommodate the workers as much as it could within the contract.”

The Grand Island plant has a workforce of 2,900. About 200 workers are Muslims originally from Somalia. Other workers hail from other African countries and Latin America, or are U.S.-born.

Like many meatpacking plants, Swift’s contract with the UFCW calls for two breaks during an eight-hour shift—a 15-minute break and a half-hour lunch. During the breaks workers have to take off their equipment, get to the break room, then return and put on their gear. In reality this means workers get a much shorter break.

According to an article in the May 16 Omaha World-Herald, “Union officials said the workers had been offered employment at an undisclosed meatpacking plant in Kansas that would accommodate their Muslim belief in regular prayer breaks.”

The May 14 walkout was the largest single-day loss of workers to the plant since the Dec. 12, 2006, Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids on Swift plants in six states. At that time, 261 workers were arrested at the Grand Island plant. Nearly 1,300 workers were taken in simultaneous raids at five other company facilities—in Greeley, Colorado; Marshalltown, Iowa; Worthington, Minnesota; Cactus, Texas; and Hyrum, Utah.

This is not the first walkout by UFCW workers over prayer breaks. In September 2005, some 300 members of UFCW Local 271 walked out at the Tyson Beef plant in Norfolk, Nebraska. That walkout began after the company fired 10 workers for “unauthorized breaks” and a supervisor followed a Somali woman to the bathroom.

Union members at Norfolk later approved a five-year contract that included the right to 10-minute prayer breaks for workers who are Muslim. In addition, the company offered reinstatement to 10 workers who were fired. Tyson closed both the Norfolk processing plant and the slaughterhouse in neighboring West Point in February 2006.  
 
 
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