JBS settles Muslim discrimination lawsuit for $5.5 million – KIRO 7 Information Seattle

DENVER – (AP) – The second largest producer of beef, pork and chicken in the US will pay up to $ 5.5 million to settle a lawsuit alleging the company has Muslim employees at a meat processing plant in the north Colorados discriminated.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed the lawsuit in federal court in Denver in 2010, saying JBS Swift & Company discriminated against employees at its Greeley beef processing facility by denying them toilet breaks and disciplining them more severely than other workers for being Muslim. Immigrants from Somalia and Black.

JBS USA LLC, trading as JBS Swift & Company, is due to pay the $ 5.5 million to approximately 300 employees included in the settlement announced by the commission on Wednesday.

Nikki Richardson, a spokeswoman for JBS USA, said the company will not accept liability in the settlement, prohibit all discrimination and harassment in its facilities and is “committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace.”

According to the lawsuit, JBS prevented Muslim workers from praying and harassed them if they tried to pray during scheduled and toilet breaks.

JBS was also accused of closing water wells during the holy month of Ramadan in 2008 to prevent Muslim Somali workers from having a drink at sunset after a day of fasting and washing before prayer. According to the lawsuit, JBS executives and other employees pelted black and Somali workers with meat or bones, gave them abusive names and tolerated abusive graffiti in toilets at the Greeley plant, including using the N-word “Somalis are disgusting”. “F— Somalis” and “F— Muslims”.

“This case is a reminder that systemic discrimination and harassment remain major issues that we as a society must address,” EEOC Chair Charlotte Burrows said in a statement.

JBS needs to take several steps to prevent further discrimination, including allowing former workers under the settlement to be reinstated; Review, update and publication of its anti-discrimination policy; and maintaining a 24-hour hotline for reporting discrimination. The company will also be required to provide quiet places to pray for employees in addition to the toilets.

Many Somalis started working at the Greeley plant after a US immigration and customs raid in 2006 that arrested 270 Hispanic employees.

Treatment of Somali workers came to a head two years later when they asked company officials to postpone the plant’s scheduled meal break so they could stop fasting at sunset during Ramadan.

The officials agreed to take an earlier lunch break, but changed course three days later, and the lawsuit said that Muslim workers who were supposed to go outside to pray were not allowed to return to the factory.

Days later, several workers were fired because the company called an unauthorized stoppage, according to the lawsuit.

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