DUBAI (AlArabiya.net)
The labor union at a factory in Tennessee has come under fire, after it won the right for workers to get an Eid holiday instead of Labor Day, as one of the eight paid holidays at the plant, press reports said.
The change was proposed by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, to accommodate the 250 Somali workers at a poultry processing plant for Tyson Foods in Shelbyville, some 40 miles south of Nashville. The five-year contract was approved by workers in November.
But many had not noticed the holiday change until an article ran in a local newspaper. Since then, reaction from right-wingers has been fast and furious, attacking both the union and Tyson Foods.
“A union in the U.S.A., a country based on Christianity,” one person wrote the union, according to the New York Times. “You call yourselves Americans? Have you forgotten 9/11?”
Another wrote: “You had no right to drop Labor Day. Muslim employees must integrate Labor Day into THEIR lives if they are going to live in America.”
Stuart Appelbaum, the union’s president, defended the decision.
“We in the labor movement have always understood that unions are only strong when we work to protect the dignity of all faiths, and that includes Muslims,” said Appelbaum, who also serves as president of the Jewish Labor Committee. “What we negotiated was the will of the workers.”
Eid al-Fitr marks the end of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting.
According to union officials quoted by the Times, Tyson Foods was forced to close the plant last year when nearly all their 250 Somali workers – of some 1,200 employees total – wanted to have the important Muslim feast day off.
As a result, management at the plant was “elated” by the proposal to make Eid a holiday, union official Randy Hadley told the New York Times. He added that Tyson usually required employees to work on Labor Day anyway, paying them a holiday premium instead.
Responding to calls for a boycott of the company by anti-immigrant bloggers and conservative commentators, a Tyson spokeswoman said the plant had three Christian chaplains, and prayer rooms for Muslims and Christians alike, the Times reported. |
