Fort Morgan, Colorado was in the national news this week and not for a good reason. This community of 12,000, ninety minutes northeast of Denver, is now home to about one thousand African refugees, speaking two dozen languages. After years of back-and-forth about religious accommodation issues, a group of Somali immigrants walked off the job at Cargill, a meat processing plant, because of a dispute regarding their prayer time.  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/08/us/prayer-dispute-between-somalis-and-plant-reshapes-a-colorado-town-again.html?_r=0.They were subsequently fired for failure to show up at work.

 

Legally, organizations are required to accommodate religious expression in the workplace to the extent they can do so reasonably and if it doesn't create an undue burden. The U.S. Supreme Court last year affirmed this principle when it ruled against Abercrombie & Fitch in a surprising 8-1 decision written by Justice Scalia. While the late justice was a devout Catholic, he was widely viewed as no friend to EEOC claims. 

http://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/release/6-1-15.cfm. In that case, a young woman had applied for a job at Abercrombie wearing a headscarf and was not hired because she did not fit in with their "Look Policy."

 

In the Cargill case, the Somali workers believed that they had been told about unacceptable changes in their prayer time at work, including that such breaks might not always be available and that they had to take breaks in smaller groups. Allegedly, one supervisor told a worker that if he wanted to pray he should just "go home," according to Jaylani Hussein of CAIR, a Muslim advocacy group. While Cargill denies these claims, the company admits that because of their complicated schedule, prayer requests might not always be granted. While the dispute plays out, several workers have filed claims with the EEOC, and some have had to move on to find other jobs.

 

What should you do?