Muslims urged to return to work and press for prayer breaks at Ariens Co.

Somali Muslims who left their jobs at Ariens Co. in a dispute over prayer breaks have been urged to return to work and continue pressing the issue.

Whatever is going to happen to their employment status will happen, Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Tuesday.

More than 50 Muslim employees at Ariens in Brillion recently stopped coming to work when management said it would begin enforcing a policy of two 10-minute breaks per work shift — without accommodations for unscheduled prayer time.

The 53 employees wanted the manufacturer of snowblowers and lawn mowers to continue a previous, more lenient practice of allowing Muslims to leave their work stations at different times — such as at dawn and sunset — to pray as their faith requires of them.

Ariens has said it’s sticking with a policy that doesn’t accommodate special prayer breaks, despite having bent the rules some when there were fewer Muslim employees.

Unscheduled work breaks, several times a day, could cost the company millions of dollars a year in lost productivity, said company President Dan Ariens.

“It gets out of control,” Ariens said, adding that other employees had questioned whether the Muslims should get prayer breaks while they didn’t get them.

Tuesday, Ariens Co. said four of the Muslim employees stayed on the job, while eight others said they wanted to return to work, and two asked for different shifts to accommodate their prayer needs.

The company doesn’t yet know how many of the other Muslims will remain off the job and risk getting fired for violation of an attendance policy.

Enforcement of the company’s policy of two breaks per work shift, and no special prayer time, begins Monday.

“We are just taking it day by day,” Ann Stilp, an Ariens spokeswoman, said Tuesday.

Federal law requires employers to offer reasonable religious accommodations to workers of all faiths.

Prayer-break accommodations aren’t always easy in a fast-paced manufacturing plant where every minute counts, “but there are factories all over America that are handling this issue quite successfully, maintaining efficient production and maintaining the religious rights of their workers,” Hooper said.

“My religious rights in the workplace are a matter of law, and not of public opinion,” he added.

Cargill Inc., based in Wichita, Kan., recently fired about 150 meat-processing plant employees for violating the company’s attendance policy after they failed to call in or show up for work for three consecutive days. The fired employees, most of whom were Somali immigrants, had protested what they thought were changes to time allowed for Muslim prayer.

But it was a misunderstanding, based on one incident at the Fort Morgan, Colo., plant, and there was no change in Cargill’s policy, which generally allows prayer breaks, said company spokesman Michael Martin.

“There are times when we can’t accommodate the requests, when we are short-staffed. By and large, though, we do try,” he said.

Following negotiations with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Cargill agreed to change a policy to allow any employee terminated for attendance violations or job abandonment to reapply for the job 30 days afterward.

Previously, former employees had to wait six months before they could reapply. The prayer-break issue isn’t completely settled, but it was important to get the fired workers back on the job, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Now, the group has turned its attention to Ariens Co., and says it wants the Muslim employees to return to work and seek prayer breaks, even if it means they might get fired for pressing the issue.

The group wants to meet with Dan Ariens, who also is president of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., about changing the policy.

If someone can leave their work station to go to the bathroom for a couple of minutes, workers also should be allowed an unscheduled prayer break, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

A good outcome to negotiations is when Muslim workers can pray, based on the dictates of their faith, and their employer can maintain efficient production, Hooper said.

Ariens has urged the Muslim employees to return to work before they are terminated for violations of the attendance policy.

The company doesn’t want the Council on American-Islamic Relations, based in Washington, D.C., to intervene on the employees’ behalf.

“We respect CAIR as an organization, but our policy has always been to work directly with our employees,” Dan Ariens said.

Muslims are required to pray five times a day. The sunset prayer is usually the issue for second-shift workers because the other prayers have a more flexible window of time.

Muslims say a workplace prayer should take only a few minutes.

“For some employees, though, it could take the better part of 30 minutes from the time they leave their work to the time they come back,” said Cargill’s Martin.

Ariens Co. hired the Somali immigrants through a Green Bay employment agency. The prayer-time dispute is a unique situation in what’s been a large influx of Somalis into the area over the last couple of years, said Jim Golembeski, director of the Bay Area Workforce Development Board in Green Bay.

Ariens employs about 900 people in Brillion, most of them on assembly lines.

“Ariens, because of the demand it’s had for workers, has been willing to hire a lot of the Somalis. They’re good workers,” Golembeski said.

“I am not aware of any other employers having an issue like this,” he added.

Golembeski said he understands both sides of the issue, which at times puts Muslim beliefs at odds with employers’ needs.

“From an employer’s point of view, you have to look at the precedent you set because there are other religious traditions, too,” Golembeski said.

jsonline.com