Grassroot Muslim Labor Reform

Cady Barrett
30 September 2008
Religious Conflicts

Earlier this month hundreds of Muslim workers walked out of their jobs at a meat processing plant in Colorado They were doing so in protest of their employer’s refusal of breaks to pray during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. The employers are now saying the walk-outs and firings had nothing to do with their religion, but rather the employee’s not returning back to work at the right time.
This is just the beginning of many more walk-outs, firings and conflicted employers. This just may be the start of the grassroots Muslim labor movement in the U.S. Immigrants are pushing for the same respect and religious accommodations that Christians get in the U.S already. The Muslim immigrants or the American Muslims see that they have American rights, the same as all other Americans. They blend in and become educators, professionals, leaders, day laborers, and factory workers. They are a part of the American system and core belief net. Muslims are a new group of immigrants to America and Americans are not used to their culture and society. We have to take it upon ourselves to accommodate them religiously and culturally.
A Tyson Foods plant in Tennessee made Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim holiday that concludes Ramadan, as one of the eight paid holidays. With 1,200 employees and Muslims making up a quarter of that number, Tyson Foods did this is response to community outrage.
I think it’s great that a company as big as Tyson Foods has done this for its employees. Ramadan is the equivalent of Lent for Christians. Christians get Easter off as well as Ash Wednesday off in some areas in America. Why should Christians get such treatment when Muslims, the largest religion in the world, be treated with such disdain?

http://www.religionnews.com/index.php?/rnstext/ramadan_sees_birth_of_emerging_muslim_labor_movement/