Outrage! - being made to wear pants

Karole28

Former Member
Joined
Aug 19, 2003
Messages
4,530
Reaction score
8
Website
Visit site
MINNEAPOLIS -- Fatuma Hassan has just enough rice in her near-empty cupboards to make it through the month. The anger she felt when she lost her job in May has given way to a dull, nagging hunger.

Yet this soft-spoken 22-year-old became an unlikely hero within the Somali community when she and five of her Muslim co-workers were dismissed last month from the Mission Foods tortilla factory in New Brighton, Minn., for refusing to wear a new company uniform -- a shirt and pants -- they consider a violation of their Islamic beliefs.

"For me, wearing pants is the same as being naked," Hassan said, noting the prophet Mohammed taught that men and women should not dress alike. "My culture, my religious beliefs, are more important than a uniform."


Click!

ed: Wonder what OSHA has to say about wearing a dress around factory machinery?
 
It was a violation of their company uniform. terms of service expected of them. IMO.
 
It was a violation of their company uniform. terms of service expected of them. IMO.

It's true. And, likely a safety issue. Let someone get sucked up into a piece of machinery because of their religion and see how fast you get shut down.

:banghead:
 
"Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Sounds so good, doesn't it? Except, of course, Emma Lazarus forgot that these people also bring baggage along with them.

IMO Minnesotan get what they ask for when sponsors bring in such large groups of refugees and expect them to assimilate and take on American values, which they are not doing. (This is not to say they should forget their heritage.)

My neighbor is a manager of a department store. She has had so many problems with Somali men refusing to take orders from a woman that she won't hire Somali men.

Remember the Muslim school just a few weeks ago that was accused of teaching Islam and anti-American values and didn't know how to put an American flag up outside the school? Well, it's still in operation.

Then, of course, there was a infamous "we won't transport you in our cab if you have alcohol in your baggage" stance by Somali taxi drivers. (Many airport taxi drivers in the Twin Cities are Muslim.) They also have problems transporting seeing-eye dogs because dogs are considered unclean.

Then, of course, the St. Paul Public Schools accommodate Islam, excusing students from classes to pray daily.

So, now they're going to sue because they don't want to wear uniforms. It would be interesting to know where the well-meaning liberals have gone since the Somali and Muslim communities have taken on a life of their own in a fight against established values.
 
"So, now they're going to sue because they don't want to wear uniforms. It would be interesting to know where the well-meaning liberals have gone since the Somali and Muslim communities have taken on a life of their own in a fight against established values.


Snipped for brevity, but :woohoo::clap: for your entire post.

Well done.
 
It was a violation of their company uniform. terms of service expected of them. IMO.

However, when they were hired they were permitted to wear skirts. The employer changed the terms of employment after they were hired. And, if they really cared about their employees, they could have easily offered or explored alternatives.
 
However, when they were hired they were permitted to wear skirts. The employer changed the terms of employment after they were hired. And, if they really cared about their employees, they could have easily offered or explored alternatives.

There is that! :nods, sagely:
 
However, when they were hired they were permitted to wear skirts. The employer changed the terms of employment after they were hired. And, if they really cared about their employees, they could have easily offered or explored alternatives.

It doesn't matter. For whatever reason. If a company-wide uniform policy is put into place, it's the company's perogative to make (or not) exceptions.

And for a factory, I can certainly understand why they don't.

I could understand it if it were a school. Or anything else, actually.
 
FTA:

Many of the religious discrimination complaints revolve around the Islamic prayer schedule. Praying five times a day is one of the essential pillars of Islam, but prayer times vary daily, based on the times of sunrise and sunset. In July, the difference between the afternoon and sunset prayers can be four hours apart; in December, it's just two hours.

The changing prayer times can be disruptive to assembly-line manufacturers that maintain assigned break schedules and can't afford to have their workers leave their work stations at unscheduled times. Many Somalis argue that their prayers take no longer than a bathroom break, yet bathroom breaks aren't prohibited.

Ed: BS. Unless they wash their arms, heads, legs and feet before they go to the bathroom, every time.

In 2005, 16 workers at Celestica's circuit-board manufacturing plant in Arden Hills were fired or suspended for taking unauthorized breaks at sunset. The changing Islamic prayer schedule was a key reason.

Faysal Haliye, 43, a Somali refugee and former Celestica employee, said he was heading to the company's prayer room -- a room where each day for two years he dutifully prayed toward Mecca -- when a manager stood near the entrance and ordered him to return to his post as a machine operator.

"I had been praying my whole life and wanted to continue praying my whole life," he said. "No one had ever told me not to (pray) before."

Haliye and 22 other workers have since filed a class action lawsuit against Celestica, accusing the company of religious discrimination. The suit is pending.


Ed: So the factory gives them a prayer room (a place to pray 5(!!) times a day); only they want the people that they're paying to WORK ,to actually WORK when they're needed.

I don't see how anyone could think Celestica is being intolerant.


=============
The Mission Foods clash has also led to a lawsuit. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil rights group, filed a religious discrimination complaint on behalf of the women with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Mission Foods had implemented the new dress code for all factory workers and told its Muslim workers that their traditional clothing was too loose-fitting and posed a safety hazard near machines.


ed: It's a safety issue.

=======================

There is no way I would hire someone who had a mandatory 5 breaks a day and had to be accomodated for their religious dress.

No way.
 
"After they were hired" may have little meaning. Perhaps their insurance company decided the company needed to change to pants.

Two years ago Target corportate offices did away with casual Fridays. So, would one expect Target corporate personnel to refuse to comply because they were hired before the policy went into effect?
 
I am sorry but I think this stuff is ridiculous!!!! Everyone has their own customs and beliefs but if they can not conform to your workplace you need to get a job someplace else.

I am catholic and go to church during my lunch on holy days - not during work time. I don't get/take 5 breaks a day - why should my co-worker? To me that is the discrimination that they are making these exceptions for these groups. What if you hired someone from Spain- would you need to give them their afternoon siesta time - doubt it, but it is their culture.
 
I am sorry but I think this stuff is ridiculous!!!! Everyone has their own customs and beliefs but if they can not conform to your workplace you need to get a job someplace else.

I am catholic and go to church during my lunch on holy days - not during work time. I don't get/take 5 breaks a day - why should my co-worker? To me that is the discrimination that they are making these exceptions for these groups. What if you hired someone from Spain- would you need to give them their afternoon siesta time - doubt it, but it is their culture.

Ah, now we have a solution. We could just close all businesses around noon every day. Those who want a power lunch would have an opportunity. Muslims could pray. And, I could have a siesta.
 
It doesn't matter. For whatever reason. If a company-wide uniform policy is put into place, it's the company's perogative to make (or not) exceptions.

And for a factory, I can certainly understand why they don't.

I could understand it if it were a school. Or anything else, actually.

Absolutely it's the employer's right to change whatever they want. However, the employees also have rights and included in them is the right to quit and file a lawsuit. I was working for a company for over a year, when they changed my hours and I was forced to quit. They fought my unemployment on the basis that I quit. However, I won, because they changed the terms of my employment and I wouldn't have quit except for the change in hours. Also, I've worked HR in manufacturing companies. I know that if the company wanted to, they could work with these women and come up with an alternative.

I remember a time when companies cared about their employees.
 
Absolutely it's the employer's right to change whatever they want. However, the employees also have rights and included in them is the right to quit and file a lawsuit.

This is why we need a "loser pays" system!
Why not find another place to work. Done!

These women don't have high school educations and have emigrated to the US for whatever reason (to escape persecution, what have you) and they won't adopt just enough Western culture to keep what work they can secure, but man, they know how to contact an attorney!


I was working for a company for over a year, when they changed my hours and I was forced to quit. They fought my unemployment on the basis that I quit. However, I won, because they changed the terms of my employment and I wouldn't have quit except for the change in hours. Also, I've worked HR in manufacturing companies. I know that if the company wanted to, they could work with these women and come up with an alternative.

I remember a time when companies cared about their employees.


Let them get sucked up in a machine? Go without pants or a dress? If they're working around equipment, what solution do you propose?

There is nothing in this article to suggest that this company does not care about it's employees. They're not being forced to work around the clock with no bio. breaks. They're not being forced to prostitute themselves or work as slaves.
WTH?
 
The surest sign that a country is in the downhill mode toward it's breaking point is when it's people do not assimilate it's language, laws and practices. We now are so politically correct..that I think we are wrong. Why does everyone have to tout their heritage so much. Why can't people say I am a proud American?
 
Some of the comments made here are so ethnocentric and narrow minded. If people would quit being so reactionary and actually take the time to learn about our involvement in these regions, the consequences of that and the reasons why this country takes in refugee's. And don't act like we allowed these people to come here out of the goodness of our gov't heart. They are here due to save face and to help fill crap jobs with crap wages to make some millionaire businessman more money while he treats his employees like slaves and denies them their Freedom of Religon which is a guaranteed right in this country. The same people who act so offended because these Muslims want to pray as THEIR religion dictates are some of the same people who want prayer in public schools to become mandatory....that is a double standard if I ever saw one.
If these people were not Muslims then I do not think this post would even be here. Americans have allowed themselves to fall victim to media propaganda filling their heads with stereotypes and prejudices.
Comments like 'watch out or this will become a third world country' are dripping with ignorance. So people who are other nationalities, religions, dress and economic class create the third world? No. Poverty creates the third world and what creates poverty on a massive scale like that? Why is it that some of the poorest countries in the world are the richest in resources? Could it be because huge 1st world companies run under the premise of capitalism only come in make deals with the ruling party, buy up the land which was owned by the people, then hire those people at slave wages to harvest it, export the countries resources and put nothing back into the economy. THAT creates the third world because that creates abject poverty which creates extremism, class struggles, government instability. It is all related. It is all cyclic. But of course I don't expect most of you to even begin to try to understand because you have been so endoctrinated into believeing one thing, one way and one of those is to believe that anyone who questions the intentions, the actions and the motivations behind countries fueled by capitalism are 'crazy and radical'. Not really. We are just critical thinkers who have taken the time and initiative to read beyond the nightly news and the NYTimes.

I hope these people sue this company for violation of their first amendment rights. They were hired under the understanding they could dress in the accords of their religion and to most of these people their religion is their LIFE. When they were living in Somalia surrounded by death, disease, starvation, war, women being raped by the hundreds, all they had was their religion and for some corporate *advertiser censored* to ask them to violate one the tenants of that religion is unacceptable and unfair. To them, it is the equivalent of your boss walking up to you and telling you that you can't wear that gold cross on your necklace anymore or you have to stop praying before you meals when you eat in the cafeteria.

Okay, have fun freaking out and talking about how nuts and misguided I am. I have been studying this stuff for years.
 

Members online

Online statistics

Members online
201
Guests online
1,794
Total visitors
1,995

Forum statistics

Threads
589,955
Messages
17,928,285
Members
228,017
Latest member
SashaRhea82
Back
Top