NEBRASKA SWIFT PLANT FIRES SCORE OF EMPLOYEES OVER RAMADAN DEMANDS

The real question is, why are these people touching the food we eat?

A Grand Island meatpacking plant fired at least 86 workers Friday after they walked off the job amid a dispute over prayers during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, company officials said.

But a Muslim leader and one of the fired workers said 150 Muslims lost their jobs.

JBS Swift & Co. spokeswoman Tamara Smid confirmed 86 firings late Friday, saying the employees were terminated earlier that day for repeatedly leaving work without authorization. She would not give any other details, including whether anyone else had been fired.

Mohamed Rage, who leads the Omaha Somali-American Community Organization, said 80 workers were thrown out after an altercation late Thursday. He says when they tried to return for their shift Friday, they were fired, along with 70 others.

Police said were called to the plant late Thursday amid reports of a riot or serious fight. But when officers arrived, the situation had calmed, said police Chief Steve Lamken.

Their leader is a man named "Mohamed Rage"? Are you friggin' kidding me?

FIRED MUSLIMS BLAME MEXICANS AND LATINOS

Que?

From Refugee Settlement Watch:

Now here comes yet another tale about the Greeley, CO meatpacker saga, this time published in The National from Abu Dhabi. (Hat tip: Blulitespecial) Two of the most vocal Somalis fired by Swift this week got to tell a story in a friendly publication sure to fire up a sympathetic audience—-their Muslim brothers and sisters. They say, the Hispanics are the problem and someone fondled Muslim women’s breasts—now here we go.

First we have Somali Graen Isse. I mentioned him here the other day. He is in the news clip.

“I have been working in this country since I was 16,” says Graen Isse, who was informed this week that his job at the JBS Swift & Co. plant in Greeley, Colorado, had been terminated. “I have never faced anything like this.”

He apparently told The National reporter it’s the Mexicans’ fault.

Simmering tensions between Hispanic immigrants, mainly from Mexico, and Muslim factory workers, most of them Somalis, erupted during Islam’s holy month when the Muslim employees asked management to shift the break time on the afternoon shift to sunset.

And, he also says he isn’t leaving Greeley.

“I am staying in Greeley,” said Isse, who previously worked as a paralegal. “But I wouldn’t want to try a job with Swift again.”

Then we have Farhia Abdi of the fondled breasts. She must be one of the three women mentioned in earlier reports who left work and went without permission to the locker room. I also wonder if she is the woman in many of the photographs, the one who in an earlier news clip is distracted because her cell phone rings. (CAIR calling?)

Farhia Abdi, who like Isse lost her job, said she and other women had their breasts fondled as they prayed in the plant’s locker rooms. She claimed male employees had been kicked while they knelt in prayer.

“It is part of our religion that you can’t talk or move while you pray,” said Abdi, who worked in Quality Assurance in her three months on the job with Swift.

Like Isse, Abdi had worked in other US firms, including major retailers like Macey’s and Target Superstores. “I always told my employers, ‘I am Muslim and I pray five times a day.’ No one ever had a problem with that, and I never even had to ask permission.”

It’s those bad Hispanics again. What? No one has told all these immigrants that diversity is beautiful and multiculturalism rules in America!

Abdi and Isse claimed their attackers were mainly Mexican immigrants and described the two ethnic groups as battling over scarce jobs at the plant.

“This is mainly down to misunderstanding,” said Isse. “First we had an agreement and they told us we can have a break at 7.30. Then the Mexicans got together and said we don’t want a break at that time.”

Here is what I wonder, if Isse had been a paralegal and Abdi had good jobs where no one bugged her about her religion at Macy’s and Target, why are they both in Greeley at a meatpacking plant which by all accounts is one of the toughest places in America to work? Could they be members of that most noble profession, community organizers?