Posted on 03/11/2005 5:58:20 AM PST by Cagey
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A local agency in Nashville, Tennessee, is investigating whether 30 Muslim contract workers were unfairly fired by Dell Inc. for taking unscheduled breaks to pray, a city official said on Thursday.
A Dell spokesman said no workers had filed complaints in what was a "misunderstanding" and the company had policies to safeguard religious practices.
The temporary employees at Dell's logistics facility in Nashville were fired in early February, according to a preliminary investigation by the human relations commission for the metropolitan region surrounding Nashville.
The dispute involved the timing of breaks for sunset prayers by the 30, all Somali immigrants, who were employed by staffing agency Spherion Corp. on a temporary basis at Dell, the world's largest personal computer maker.
"The workers were told: 'Choose work or choose faith,'" said Kelvin Jones, executive director of the Metro Human Relations Commission for the greater Nashville area. "They didn't see an option: They chose not to work."
Dell spokesman David Frink said, "We had some contract workers who left Dell basically on a misunderstanding of our religious (policies)."
He added, "Our long practice has been to accommodate religious belief, including time for prayers."
Dell aimed to resolve the issue "beneficially" and several workers have since returned to work at Dell, he said.
Dell operations include a major production center in Penang, in the majority Muslim nation of Malaysia, and facilities in Singapore and Bangalore, India, each with large Muslim populations.
A spokesman at Spherion, a $2 billion-a-year staffing agency, was not available for comment.
Several Somali workers fired from a nearby Whirlpool plant lost a trial on a similar issue last September. The jury decided Whirlpool was within its rights to limit workers' break times so as not to disrupt factory production.
Nashville has seen an influx of at least 5,000 immigrants from Somalia over the past decade, Jones said.
Get real, kelvin, ya cheesebrain
I'm always curious about stories like this. I just don't see any reasonable manager at a large company like Dell NOT bending over backward to accomodate people.
Here's what they should do: Let the guys pray for a half hour in the morning, noon and evening while at work BUT make them come in 45 minutes early and leave 45 minutes late.
Simple, its called flex time - the reason I'm not getting fired or considered late after taking my dog to the vet this morning.
Just another lawyer with his hand out.
The prayer breaks is not an issue. Islam allows the prayers to be missed for work.
These are TEMPORARY hourly employees. They don't even work for Dell they work for a temp agency. Dell could let them go if they didn't like the way they eat their lunch if they wanted to.
If you try to fire me, I'm suing.
You're taking your dog to the vet???!?
You told me your uncle died.
You're fired.
I'd bet Tennessee is a right-to-work state. In a RTW state, any person can be fired for any reason.
What if my religion involves ingesting psychedelic mushrooms? Can I still give tech support?
Dear ruiner,
"Simple, its called flex time - the reason I'm not getting fired or considered late after taking my dog to the vet this morning."
Not every job is amenable to flextime. I think that these are factory jobs. Dell runs a pretty tight manufacturing operation. Folks need to be where they need to be at specific times. For a significant number of workers to suddenly disappear for five or ten minutes in the middle of a shift probably isn't going to boost productivity.
The sunset prayers in discussion here occur at a different time every day throughout the year. All the Muslims working on the factory line would have to depart the line for a little while all at the same time. But what's worse, that time would change a little each day throughout the year, and over the course of the year, vary by a couple of hours or more.
Thus, to accommodate these workers, it seems that the manufacturing schedule would have to be completely designed around the daily shifting prayer requirements of this group of workers.
That seems a bit unreasonable to me, and is likely why Whirlpool won in court with similar facts.
I wonder whether Dell has the guts to hold firm.
sitetest
Right-o. I worked for temp agencies for years, and that's the beauty of it. The whole point is to avoid messy employer/ee relationship nonsense. I bet the agency made a deal with Dell; 30 workers is a lot for a temp agency to lose.
And what if your religion requires that you behead infidels when you encounter them. Can you still get that job in sales?
If nothing else, this story makes it eminently clear why very few complex manufacturing processes take place in countries like Somalia.
LOL.
Isn't that standard practice? How much thought does it take to say "you'll have to reload from the installation media"?
Good point, I should have RTFA a little better as I didn't realize their job status (temp manufacturing).
I was in no way implying Dell was at fault or wrong in what they did, but was I stated before I was surprised that (given PC bullsh!t and lawsuits) they didn't try to avoid this result like the plague. But your post enlightened me!
I'm moving my business to TN. If I want to fire anybody for any reason, its my right to.
How can this be a problem? America is 230 years old. Why don't we institute what ever fix was prescribed when Christians and Jews ran into prayer/practices problems at work?
Just wait til they start praying in public schools.
Texas is Right-to-Work also and, I can tell you from personal experience, there are almost ZERO lawsuits over job actions here.
Hmm, if Christians did the same thing, they'd be fired, too. I don't see it as a Muslim bashing thing, do you?
They already are.
I hate to say this, but Kelvin's right. he's answerable to his bosses, the shareholders, and the bottom line, NOT employees whining about their religion.
Fire 'em all, I say. Their loyalty should be to the people who sign their paychecks, not Allah. And who needs Somalis working there anyway? Why not hire some native-born Americans?
Hell, I work in restaurant and Fridays are our busiest nights. Do you think they'll give me Good Friday night off? I don't think so.
Flex time only works if there are people to cover your breaks. Were all these people at the same call center?
You can probably still do it better than the Pakistanis who I have to call now.......
If they hire these guys back or give them anything else it's going to make me sick. They can live and work like all other Americans or they can go back to the hell hole they came from.
>>I hate to say this<<
I don't follow your reluctance.
What is that supposed to mean?
"Nashville probes firing of Dell Muslim workers"
Charile Daniels and Toby Keith pondering over which one is going to write a song about it. :-)
>>I hate to say this, but Kelvin's right. he's answerable to his bosses, the shareholders, and the bottom line, NOT employees whining about their religion.<<
"I hate to say this"
Why are you reluctant to say,
"but Kelvin's right. he's answerable to his bosses, the shareholders, and the bottom line, NOT employees whining about their religion."
As an Orthodox Jew, I don't work Friday night and Saturday. My team members covered for me on Saturday and Jewish holidays, and I covered for them on Sunday, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years.
Are you afraid for some unknown reason to offend kingattax with your post?
kingattax wsn't reluctanct to offend Kelvin Jones, was he?
reluctanct
Synonyms: afraid, averse, backward, calculating, cautious, chary, circumspect, demurring, diffident, discouraged, disheartened, disinclined, grudging, hanging back, hesitant, hesitating, indisposed, involuntary, laggard, loath, opposed, queasy, recalcitrant, remiss, shy, slack, slow, squeamish, tardy, uncertain, uneager, unwilling, wary
"I'd bet Tennessee is a right-to-work state. In a RTW state, any person can be fired for any reason."
It's a right-to-work state. My father-in-law wrote the law way back when. He was state attorney general back in 49-? and chairman of the Republican party when Republicans weren't cool in Tennessee.
Well, if they want things the way this group apparently wants them, we need to shut down everything on Sunday - including Police, Fire, power, and water. Nobody should be expected to work when they want to exercise their religion.
True. It also illustrates one of the many reasons that many manufacturing processes (even simple ones) are moving overseas.
I wish I had you when I needed tech support!!! I actually had major laptop issues and called Dell. Had a very nice guy on the other end but he did sound of some mddle easten background. He ended up having to re-send me a Dell CD (of course it had to be the ONE disk I couldn't find) He overnighted it to me and I called him back the next day to walk me through it's installation. Forgot to mention, he actually was in India. Found that out during one of the many "dead air" sections of our conversations. Asked me where I was from, asked him the same, blah, blah, blah..
Anyway, my laptop was making some serious 'I'm friggin' working, here" noises and I asked, "Ok, when this is done, it'll be fixed right?" Response, "Oh, yes sir definitely.. when done, your comoputer be just like the day you got it..." (all spoken in extreme, struggle to understand, but thought i could understand english) and ya know what?? he was absolutely right, it was EXACTLY LIKE WHEN I FRIGGIN' GOT IT!!!! Everything was gone... everything!! My dad past away 2 years ago from bone cancer, 6 weeks after his 60th birthday. Pix from his party at the hospital, GONE! Everything gone.... That is where I get very upset, if you're an American based company and cater to mostly Americans??? Then have fu*king Americans speak to Americans!!!
you need to reread the article. "kelvin" is with the "agency" thats investigating this....which shareholders is "kelvin" answerable to?.... look again :)
you better read the article again. "kelvin" is probably some pointy-headed liberal with the "agency" thats "probing" this complaint. he ISNT with dell. you were being critical about a mistake that Chief DaJuan made.
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