{"id":940,"date":"2008-09-17T17:56:56","date_gmt":"2008-09-17T17:56:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2008\/09\/union-muslim-workers-reach-dea.php"},"modified":"2008-09-17T17:56:56","modified_gmt":"2008-09-17T17:56:56","slug":"union-muslim-workers-reach-dea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/09\/union-muslim-workers-reach-dea","title":{"rendered":"Union: Muslim Workers Reach Deal for Prayer Time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Associated Press &#8211; September 17, 2008 <\/strong><br \/>\nOMAHA, Nebraska &#8211; A meatpacking plant has agreed to accommodate Muslim workers&#8217; request for prayer time during Ramadan, union officials said Wednesday.<br \/>\nEarlier this week 300 Muslim JBS Swift &amp; Co. workers, most of Somali background, walked off the job in protest of the prayer dispute. No one was fired after the protest.<br \/>\nDan Hoppes, president of the local United Food and Commercial Workers Union, said management at the plant has agreed to temporarily change the timing of the second-shift lunch break to accommodate workers wanting time to pray during the Muslim observance of Ramadan.<br \/>\nWorkers previously took the 30-minute break in shifts. The change will force the entire line to break at once. The arrangement will be in effect the next nine working days, which will cover the remainder of Ramadan, Hoppes said.<br \/>\nA phone message left with company officials was not immediately returned Wednesday.<br \/>\nThe plant employs about 2,500 people, not including management, Hoppes said. He estimates about 500 of the plant&#8217;s workforce is Muslim.<br \/>\nMore than 100 workers at a Greeley, Colorado, Swift plant were fired last week because the company said they walked away from work before their shifts ended. The workers blamed the company&#8217;s refusal to allow their breaks to coincide with sunset so they could pray.<br \/>\n<em>Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Associated Press &#8211; September 17, 2008 OMAHA, Nebraska &#8211; A meatpacking plant has agreed to accommodate Muslim workers&#8217; request for prayer time during Ramadan, union officials said Wednesday. Earlier this week 300 Muslim JBS Swift &amp; Co. workers, most of Somali background, walked off the job in protest of the prayer dispute. No one was&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Union: Muslim Workers Reach Deal for Prayer Time<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/09\/union-muslim-workers-reach-dea\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Union: Muslim Workers Reach Deal for Prayer Time\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Associated Press &#8211; September 17, 2008 OMAHA, Nebraska &#8211; A meatpacking plant has agreed to accommodate Muslim workers&#8217; request for prayer time during Ramadan, union officials said Wednesday. Earlier this week 300 Muslim JBS Swift &amp; Co. workers, most of Somali background, walked off the job in protest of the prayer dispute. 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Earlier this week 300 Muslim JBS Swift &amp; Co. workers, most of Somali background, walked off the job in protest of the prayer dispute. No one was&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/09\/union-muslim-workers-reach-dea","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2008-09-17T17:56:56+00:00","author":"nsymmonds","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/09\/union-muslim-workers-reach-dea","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/09\/union-muslim-workers-reach-dea","name":"Union: Muslim Workers Reach Deal for Prayer Time","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-09-17T17:56:56+00:00","dateModified":"2008-09-17T17:56:56+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/09\/union-muslim-workers-reach-dea#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/09\/union-muslim-workers-reach-dea"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/09\/union-muslim-workers-reach-dea#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Union: Muslim Workers Reach Deal for Prayer Time"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2","name":"nsymmonds","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","caption":"nsymmonds"},"description":"Nicole Symmonds is Beliefnet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Prayer editor and also covers Christianity. A New Yorker by birth but a Floridian by tenure, Nicole graduated from Florida A&M University with a B.S. in Public Relations and a minor in Sociology. She moved to NY to pursue a career in journalism which started at In Style magazine. There she learned the ropes of magazine reporting, researching, and writing\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand became exponentially more stylish. But what seemed like a deep interest in fashion and entertainment would soon be revealed as merely the vehicle that moved her closer to discovering her purpose, writing and covering matters of the Christian faith. While in her purpose-driven vehicle she can be found traveling between Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens for life, work and worship, respectively. From fashion to faith and the journey isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t over yet\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/nsymmonds"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}