So reports Fox News:
A 5-year contract approved by members of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union at the Shelbyville, Tenn., [Tyson Foods] plant last November includes the change [of paid holidays to exclude Labor Day and instead include the Muslim Eid al-Fitr holiday] to accommodate Muslim workers....
The seven additional paid holidays are the employee's birthday, New Year's Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas, Mickelson said....
Tyson officials said that approximately 250 of the plant's 1,200 employees are Somalis who entered the United States as political refugees. Most, if not all, are believed to be Muslim ....
Tyson officials said the contract was agreed to by 80 percent of the union's 1,000 members at the plant.
This year Eid al-Fitr falls on Oct. 1.
English First, in a seemingly non-English-related objection (or is it that they just don't like the Arabic name?), complains:
English First today denounced as multiculturalism run amok a decision by a Tennessee Tyson Foods poultry plant to eliminate Labor Day as a paid holiday for employees and replace it with a paid observance of a Muslim holy day....
A new immigrant to America, legal or illegal, enjoys more rights than taxpaying American citizens, Boulet said. The notion that immigrants should adapt to America is being destroyed one bilingual education class, one press one for English, and one ACLU-approved Muslim foot-washing bath at a time.
Bill Poser's post at Language Log brought this to my attention, and I agree with him that this is entirely fine. "You might think that this is the kind of thing that labor unions are supposed to do: negotiate holidays that are convenient for their members." The business wins, the Muslim members win, and it seems like the non-Muslim members are generally quite happy, too, judging by the vote.
But more importantly, America was expressly not founded on the notion that immigrants should adapt to America's religious beliefs. Indeed, some of the most important early colonies were settled by people who didn't want to adapt to English religious beliefs, and while some of them did promptly try to expel or exclude people who wouldn't accept the colonies' new religious orthodoxy, thankfully that largely disappeared by the Founding of the nation, and religious tolerance -- including accommodation of minority religious groups -- continued to increase since then. Jews were allowed to come to America without rejecting their own religious beliefs (for an early and surprising legal accommodation of Jewish religious beliefs, see here). Quakers' and other groups' opposition to swearing oaths is expressly accommodated by several provisions in the Constitution, which allow affirmations instead of oaths. More recently, businesses and schools with large Jewish workforces or student bodies have set up some Jewish holy days as days off. The same should apply to Muslims.
Not all religious beliefs, of course, have been accommodated, and not all should be accommodated. But requests from minority religious groups (including recent immigrant groups) for accommodation are a longstanding and respectable part of the American tradition of religious freedom. Where religious pluralism goes, multiculturalism is indeed a traditional American value. And the union vote at the Tyson plan is not "multiculturalism run amok" -- it's the American tradition of religious tolerance and religious accommodation working as it should be.
Finally, just to respond to the anticipated complaints about Islam being special because of the violence of some Muslim extremists, or even the endorsement of religious violence by substantial numbers of Muslims around the globe: None of this has anything to do with whether Somali immigrant Muslims working at a meatpacking plant should get a day off. When someone suggests religious accommodations aimed at letting people (of whatever religion) contribute to terrorist organizations, or engage in suicide bombings, I'll happily agree that they should be rejected -- just as religiously motived attacks on abortion clinics and other sorts of religious violence should remain fully punishable. But that some of the Somali-born meatpackers' coreligionists are doing bad things based on bad ideas doesn't make it the desire to have Eid al-Fitr off any less legitimate.
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I'm totally against political correctness and some of the bend-over-backwardness we've seen for various groups just to be "sensitive"... but this is entirely different.
80% voted for it. So, they obviously want that schedule. Maybe the non-muslims thought their muslim buddies should get a holiday too, and october was a convenient time for the non-muslims.
heck, if 80% wanted to amend their holiday schedule to take off National Bunny Garroting Day, why should I care?
Labor Day is not a religious holiday, it is a secular holiday. Substituting a religious or quasi-religious holiday, for another one, fine. Substituting a religious holiday for a non-religious holiday, not fine. It degrades the civic society of the country.
I'm not so sure. After all, some unions call their headquarter buildings a "temple."
One possibility is that you simply mean that this means fewer opportunities for attendance at common events, such as Labor Day parties and the like. But I'm not sure this is so, since it would be a very modest effect, given that we're talking just about one day, and many others are available (plus there are plenty of practical forces that are highly unlikely to see this lead to some sort of massive slippery slope down to every workplace having a different set of holidays). I take it that the slightness of this effect is also one reason that many non-Muslim employees were fine with this holiday -- or for that matter are fine with having their birthdays off instead of insisting on some common day.
Somewhat off-topic: What kind of a facility are we talking about, anyway? A chicken packing plant? Then why is the Union called the "Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union?"
the only thing that needs to be added to the list is a jewish holiday and the 3 big religions all get a special day off.
What I don't understand is why the labor union insisted that only the clerical staff join a union. No one needs a union more than law firm associates.
I strongly suspect that the good ole boys in the Tennessee union thought it only fair that a quarter of their fellow workers get an important religious holiday off. It's not like they were planning on marching in a Labor Day parade or anything and October is a better month for a holiday anyway.
Correction: It's not part of American tradition but part of a U.S. Supreme Court adventurism under the faulty disguise it has the power to dictate social religious preferences within states.
That's exactly the point. Yes, this is a small step but in general I think that we ought to work to preserve our remaining communal activities rather than cast them aside given the fractal fracturing of our society.
I know one police agency that was represented by the teamsters. I thought that was hilarious.
Because it's not nice to garrote bunnies!
Blue: (1) So you'd equally fault Tyson for allowing employees their birthdays off, as opposed to insisting that the employees take, say, Presidents' Day instead?
(2) Don't you think that "degrades the civic society of the country" is a little too strong a term for an employer's and union's decision to have one day off be specific to that particular employer? Before the change, Tyson employees used to have 111 days off (setting aside people with weekend and holiday work) in common with everyone else -- 52 Saturdays, 52 Sundays, and 7 holidays -- and probably about 16 days off that weren't in common with everyone else (their birthday, plus two weeks of vacation, plus [say] five days of personal or sick leave, though I realize this is in some measure guesswork). Now they have 110 days off in common with everyone else, and 17 days off that aren't in common.
Is this really a "degrad[ation of] the civic society of the country," especially since, as I suggested, there are powerful practical forces that are unlikely to yield to massive slippage in this direction?
(3) Note that your rationale doesn't turn on the religious nature of the holiday, since if everyone takes a day off, people of other religions could still gather on that day for secular events; your objection must be that it's just the people at this plant who have the day off, so they can't do communal activities with others.
If the story was about workers trading Independence Day for Eid Al-Fitr, I'd agree with you. But Labor Day has very little civic meaning to it, and to the extent it has any, it's for unionized workers. If a group of unionized workers want to trade a holiday created to honor them for a religious holiday that has more meaning to them, then I don't really see the problem.
I'd also have more of a problem if it was a tradeoff between two religious holidays. A vote to replace the Christmas day off with the Eid day off would really be nasty, and tend to screw over the minority.
So if there's any symbolic degradation, it's not of "patriotic civic life," but of one particular symbol of the union movement. The rest of us, I think, aren't much affected by that.
PersonFromPorlock: Recall that believers in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and so on have long had days of importance for them. Believers in Christianity have even long had their holidays be official days off, for a variety of reasons (including that when enough people want a day off for themselves, it makes sense to make it a common day off). If that's "fragmentation," it's fragmentation that's a natural artifact of religious pluralism.
Now if instead of 111 now-secular (though often formerly Christian, and to some still Christian) days off for everyone, we had a massive shift to (say) 55 days off for Jews, 55 different ones for Protestants, 55 others for Catholics, 55 others for Muslims, 55 others for the irreligious, and the like, then that might be a problem. But having a day or two off for Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Eid al-Fitr -- when this makes sense for an employer that would otherwise have a lot of people absent on that day -- doesn't strike me as much to complain about.
But we're not a purely civil society. We're a society with many different religous factions
Funny that nobody seemed to care about this when Christmas was an official holiday.
If there is sufficient demand among the workers for this holiday, I fail to see why agreeing to it is different than agreeing to a Christmas holiday. As a Jew, I celebrate neither, and don't see any reason other than popular demand to distinguish between them.
What shocks me is that Tyson workers only get 7 holidays per year.
And I might just create a holiday to celebrate the fact that this is the first VC post involving unions which did not quickly degenerate into an orgy of union-bashing. We pro-labor types appreciate the moderation.
In most Arab countries, eid is about as religious as Christmas in the west - for some people, a lot, but for most, a shopping, travel and gorging season.
Tyson could just do what my company does: give everybody four floating holidays. Some guys use them for easter, some for yom kippur, some for eid, and some for long weekends in the summer or a nine-day thanksgiving break.
As has been mentioned, eid moves 11 days forward every year. This year it's October 1, next year it will be September 20, in 2010 on September 9, and so on.
The Jewish festivals do the same, but their calendar gets reset every three years. Not the Muslim one.
Enduring Ramadan during an Arabic summer, when there is no eating or drinking between sunup and sundown, must be tough. However, some of my Arab friends contend that abstaining from cigarettes for 12 hours is the toughest aspect... :-)
. . . and was not May 1.
But I won't suggest that modern unions might be less attached to Labor Day because of that history. Labor activists at universities may feel that way (based on my own work with the labor studies dept. in college, I know many who do), but the rank and file union members are likely to be completely unaware of that bit of history, and generally aren't the leftist political radicals their early-20th-century counterparts were.
The big question for me is how there are so many Somali political refugees being granted residency in this country that one factory ended up with 250 of them. Are we basically just letting anybody from Somalia who manages to wash up on our shores stay here indefinitely? Is coming from a failed state a blanket license to ignore quotas? We need to seriously reconsider our immigration laws if that's all it takes to get in as a "political refugee".
Because it's a Moslem holiday, and Muslims are EEEEVILLLLL!
PersonFromPorlock:
Christmas is a religious holiday. Those secular people who celebrate it (in the United States, at least -- Japan is a different story) are usually people whose families had at least some Christian background.
Among friends, acquaintances, and co-workers who are not Christian, most people couldn't care less whether the day off was Christmas or another day. Although it's not unknown, I don't think you'll find too many people from Jewish or Muslim backgrounds actually celebrating the holiday in some way. For many of these people, it's almost anathema to even think of celebrating it, even in a secular sense of just having a tree with presents.
Brief anecdote: My university -- with a huge Jewish population -- once scheduled the first day of classes for the first day of Rosh Hashanah. Written petitions followed, begging the school to change the first day of classes. I still remember the most common reason given by people who were opposed to changing the first day of classes: If we give off for Rosh Hashanah, we'll have to give off for every other religious holiday.
It didn't occur to anybody making that argument that having exams end immediately before Christmas showed what hypocrisy the argument was.
Except that after Labor Day, you can't wear white shoes anymore. Or you can, depending on which one it is.
As an atheist I think that all religions are silly, and some are counterproductive, but there is no rational way to look at Islam and be anything other than appalled. Many people kill in the name of their religions but Islam sanctions it and extends a special state of grace to those who slay the infidels.
There is nothing bigoted or prejudiced about my taking such a viewpoint. I have examined their philosophy, found it repellent and made a judgment that those who truly adhere to its covenants are outside the bounds of acceptable behavior. The same applies to Nazis or Communists or totalitarians of other stripes as well. If any of those groups were given a holiday of their own by a major US company I think you would see a similar reaction... and rightfully so. We don't hunt such people down or drive them from our midst but we recognize them for what they are and we try not to humor their delusions or hatreds for fear that they will spread.
Anyone who harps on the legality of the situation has missed the point entirely.
Sheesh, these city people! Garrotting or snaring is the method of choice because it doesn't damage the fur the way shooting does.
I agree with your assessment of religion in general and Islam in particular, but I would distinguish the case of Islam from those of Nazism and Communism. The difference is that there isn't really much variation in the beliefs of Nazis or Communists, nor such a thing as "cultural Nazism" or "cultural Communism". Celebrating a Nazi or Communist holiday has a clear and offensive meaning. Islam differs in two ways. First, although I agree that the offensive aspects of Islam are by no means limited to "extremists", there is nonetheless a fair amount of variation in what exactly Muslims believe. Second, for many Muslims, celebrating a holiday like Eid-al-Fitr is more a cultural event than a religious event. Accomodating Eid-al-Fitr is thus not repugnant to me in the same way that accomodating the celebration of Hitler's birthday or Blutzeuge would be.
cjwynes, in general smaller immigrant groups aren't evenly distributed throughout the U.S. For instance, in the 2000 census, over half the Hmong in the U.S. lived in California or Minnesota. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that most Somali in the U.S. live in only a handful of places. Although it would surprise me for one of those places to be Shelbyville, Tennessee...
You may wish to acquaint yourself with the history of Islam, and particularly how Islamic civilization compared with Christian civilization in the Middle Ages.
Frankly this whole issue sounds like the proverbial tempest in a teapot -- a union negotiated a day off that its members wanted, in exchange for another "day off" that wasn't being given off anyway by the employer. And the fact that a labor union gave up Labor Day sounds especially appropriate, no? Breathless reporting of non-news like this is one reason why I can't stand Fox News (in fact when O'Reilly comes on my TV has learned to shut itself off for its own protection before I start throwing heavy objects at it).
Yeah, it's not like other religions afford special status to their martyrs or warriors...wait....
Honestly, what this has to do with hundreds of Somalis and their families that came to U.S. for asylum and a better life, I can't quite follow. Somehow we go from a common sense solution for both the employer and employees to indicting a whole belief system and their followers.
I used to get Good Friday off, but almost no one does that any more (at least in the south). Most businesses have replaced MLK day for President's day. Not too many people in the south get Veterans day anymore or Columbus day. I know that a lot of businesses are setting the Jewish holidays aside now. I get 2 days off for Thanksgiving, Christmas &New Years, but many people only get 1. I get 2 floating holidays, some of you may be getting none, 1 or 3.
Paid company holidays come and go. They have been doing this since there were paid company holidays. If we are going to complain about 1 plant at one company getting Eid off, they why are we not complaining about all the other changes in religious and civil holidays over the years. Why are you not demanding to get Veterans day back along with Good Friday.
This whole argument is silly.
I don't see why they can't do something like that. Takes religion out of the equation completely and lets everyone get what they want.
I salute ben franklin for bravely stepping up and putting this thread back on the right track!
Screw over the minority, like having Christmas off instead of Eid does in most plants?
Note to the terminally white collar: Most blue collar workers LIKE to work holidays (or at least have plant open, so they have the opportunity to work) as they get welcome extra pay. "I'm working tons of overtime this month" is a happy brag in that demographic, rather than a gripe (or veiled, backhanded machismo) as it would be for office workers.
Doing so reverses our history of replacing sectarian holidays with secular ones, which we have done simply through attrition-of-meaning. Instead, it replaces a secular holiday with a sectarian one, kind of like replacing Halloween with All Souls' Day: Even though the irreligious could still dress up funny and party, the fact of the change would make the holiday the 'property' of the religious. And it would put the imprimatur of the corporation, if not the state, on the religion.
That doesn't help civil unity. Imagine how Moslem workers will react to infidel fellow workers 'profaning' their holiday with beer and (pork) barbecue. I suspect we'll find out; sensitivity training, anyone?
As for our traditional holidays, they're only nominally religious. You can go to church if you want to but that's just one way to spend 'a day off'. It's been that way for a long time now.
Quite a few government offices in Mississippi have taken Good Friday off by trading another holiday ... Confederate Memorial Day.
When will private businesses get with the program and do what's right for civil unity? There should be a law!
As to replacing a secular holiday with a religious one, that's a pretty sensible thing to do when a lot of people are religious. As I mentioned, everyone already has 100+ days off that are either totally secular or formerly Christian but now secular. What's wrong with everyone having a day off that owes its genesis to the felt religious needs of the other 20% of their coworkers?
I am still trying to figure out what the big deal is. Honestly.
Yes, we will find out. One of us will be surprised. I do not expect it to be me. Now excuse me while I go take a shower.
The point is Isalm is bad? Hmm, I also don't see what your point has to do with a collective bargaining agreement allowing employees to profane a "holy day" of Islam by working, or not profaneing it by observing it.
I think, I'll go with George Washington, instead of "Ben Franklin:"
"The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind
examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent national gifts. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support."
Since Muslim citizens have, among other things, fought and died for the United States, in its military forces, I doubt thier "appalling" religion puts Muslims citizens, or thier holy days, beyond the pale of American tolerance, any more than atheists are.
Also, since Muslim holidays are based on a lunar calendar, the day of Eid al-Fitr will change from year to year. And without any extra months to even things out (as in the Jewish calendar), the holiday will march through all 12 months of the year before arriving back in October.
Most of the non-Christians I know (including me) really enjoy Christmas.
That seems rather impractical for a company holiday.
It sounds to me as if the English First people are just upset that any non-Christian religion should get its holidays recognized.
Mandatory multiculturalism and mandatory multilingualism are two sides of the same “America is always wrong” coin. Accordingly, multiculturalism has been an inherent part of the bilingual education agenda since its inception.
The anti-English lobby firmly believes it is the duty of all Americans to learn the language(s) spoken by immigrants, while arguing that it is somehow unfair to ask immigrants to learn America’s language, English. Mandatory multiculturalists see nothing but flaws in American culture, while seeing nothing but virtues in the culture of every other nation..
Keep in mind that Muslim workers at the Tyson Tennessee poultry plant had the right to take their individual birthdays as paid holidays, which meant a devout Muslim could exchange his birthday holiday for his religious holiday.
Instead, all employees, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, lost an American national holiday, Labor Day, in return for a Moslem religious holiday . Had the Tyson workers in question voted to replace Labor Day with, say, the 40th day after Easter, when Christians believe their resurrected Messiah, Jesus Christ, ascended to Heaven, would you still say that the workers “who used their labor union to negotiate a more convenient holiday schedule have a better understanding of what America is about than” I?
Wait until Tyson managers learn that the Muslim holiday in question, Eid, is to be observed on a moment’s notice. Notes the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR): “Because the occurrence of Eid depends upon the sighting of the new moon, the exact date can only be determined with certainty the night before” [CAIR, “An Educator’s Guide to Islamic Religious Practices” (1997, 2005)].
Jim Boulet Jr.
Executive Director
English First
Yes.
Please read what is going on before stating anything. You stated: "Instead, all employees, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, lost an American national holiday, Labor Day, in return for a Moslem religious holiday."
You forgot to mention that employees had been required to work Labor Day (at a higher rate for that day) for nearly the last 20 years. Now, all employees have a day off. Sounds like a good deal.
As for workers voting to take a day off - I again do not udnerstand why this is such a big deal, unless there is some anti-Muslim animus.
Lastly, what does multi-culturalism and English First gave to do with this?
Per Son:
I'm guessing you know the answer to that question already and are just boob-baiting. Hope it works.
David M. Nieporent: I agree re Christmas.
The problem is that making the fight Christmas vs. Eid makes it a fight between religions. Like it or not, the U.S. is and always has been a majority Christian country, and Christmas is the default winter festival holiday. Taking Christmas away from the Christian plant workers isn't objectively more wrong than eliminating Labor Day, but posing a vote to workers of, "Which day off do you want, Eid or Christmas?" is a recipe for sectarian acrimony.
If you can't name at least two major reasons why having Eid-al-Fitr off and having Christmas off are fundementally different beasts, then you don't meet the minimum thought threshold to post in a Youtube comment section, much less this one.
If you can't name at least two major reasons why there is no difference in these or any other holidays as to the specific issue here -- what an employer and a union that clearly represents the explicit wishes of an overwhelming majority of its members can legally and properly agree to -- then, etc.
Why is "the country" the appropriate denominator for calculating the majority that sets holidays?
Does majority-Mormon Utah have to bow to the non-Mormon rest of the country in setting holidays? Does majority-Catholic Boston have to bow to the more Protestant national majority? If the factory is majority Muslim, that's the appropriate fraction in my view.
Nice... ad hominem attacks are so much better then a legitimate argument.
The workers at the Tyson plant have now come to the same conclusion: