Firm offers unique religious accommodation — Muslim holiday
August 7, 2008 by Jim GiulianoPosted in: Immigration, In this week's e-newsletter, Incentives, Latest News & Views, policies
Tyson Foods, known for its poultry products, got some publicity when the company and its union agreed to a novel approach to religious accommodation: substituting a Muslim holiday for Labor Day.
The idea took hold in Tyson’s Shelbyville, TN, plant, which employees about 300 Somali immigrants, most of whom are Muslims. In past years, the plant nearly shut down on the Muslim holiday of Id al-Fitr because, as a religious accommodation, the company had to so many of the Somalis the day off without pay.
The resolution: Company officials and union negotiators huddled and decided that since so many employees needed the day off, the company may as well declare it a paid holiday.
Something has to go
The hitch was that the company refused to add another holiday to the schedule, so something had to go. And Labor Day got the ax from the holiday schedule. Tyson workers won’t get the first Monday in September off or get premium pay for working that day.
Tyson officials told reporters that the plant was always open on Labor Day anyway - though workers got overtime pay for coming in that day - so deleting Labor Day from the eight official annual holidays didn’t have much impact on operations. The company has described the change as a straight union-negotiated benefit, and not as a religious accommodation.
According to company officials, the poultry plant offers prayer rooms to Muslim and Christians alike.
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August 11th, 2008 at 11:36 am
I give Tyson kudos for being creative and trying to make the best out of required accommodations, but what would have been the problem with changing the Labor Day holiday to a “floating holiday” or personal holiday? If this were done then the employees who preferred the Labor day holiday could use the day there, and the employees who needed the Muslim hoiday could have used the day to fit their personal needs. I’m afraid what was done could create a bigger “rift” between employees who feel like something was “taken away from one group” to accommodate another group.
The win-win could have been simply converting one day to a floating holiday. This day would have to be approved so if an employee wanted to use it for their birthday or the birthday of a child, Good Friday or any other day in the year, they still could, while maintaining the same number of benefits hours for holidays and allowing the management to schedule or manage production.
August 11th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Kudos to Jacki. As I read this I thought, “I’ll bet that really goes over big with the non-muslims who are losing a holiday provided by almost every business in America that gives paid holidays (including government offices and every company I have ever worked for). Changing a holiday to a floating holiday somewhat mitigates that kickback.
Even if only 10% of the workforce is non-muslim, I sure wouldn’t want 10% of our employees upset because they “lost” a holiday. Do the non-muslims who work the new holiday, Id al-Fitr, get premium pay?
While we are on the topic of holidays… Many companies give the Thanksgivng and the day after as paid holidays. I talk to a lot of employees who would rather take Christmas Eve. In our case, we might as well give the day off because so many people request it anyway. Floating holiday takes care of that too…