Staff Attorney, Rabya Khan, of CAIR-Chicago was back in Grand Island, Nebraska again last week continuing depositions on the JBS Swift Case. CAIR-Chicago is representing about 50 plaintiff intervenors in an U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) discrimination lawsuit filed against JBS Swift in 2010.

Khan will be traveling again next week to Minneapolis for defending our clients in their depositions.

CAIR-Chicago filed a complaint in federal court yesterday against The American Bottling Company on behalf of a Muslim man who was unjustly fired from the company after requesting time off on Fridays for Islamic congregational prayers.

(CHICAGO, IL, 8/28/09) The Chicago office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Chicago) today announced that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has determined that Somali Muslim employees at a meatpacking plant in Nebraska faced “unlawful harassment” because of their religion.

Central Nebraska has become the latest stage for an unfolding American drama. Tensions over Muslim workers’ request for prayer time erupted into worker walkouts, protests, counterprotests, a brief plant shutdown and employee firings at a meatpacking plant in Grand Island.

A group of the more than 120 Muslim employees fired last week at the Swift plant in Greeley met with an attorney representing the Council on American-Islamic RelationsWednesday, hoping that the advocacy group can help them find a resolution.

Rima Kapitan, with CAIR’s Chicago office, on Wednesday met with Muslim workers recently fired by JBS Swift. She said CAIR is coordinating with an attorney retained by about 60 of the fired workers.

An agreement between Muslim workers and a Nebraska meatpacking plant reached late Tuesday could be an outline for an accord in a similar dispute in Greeley, people involved in the discussions say.

But a major hurdle in any agreement over Muslim prayer times will be whether 103 workers who were fired for walking away from the JBS Swift & Co. slaughterhouse in Greeley are rehired, said Christina Abraham, civil-rights director at the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Chicago.

A volunteer attorney with the Council on American-Islamic Relations said Wednesday thatCAIR has been negotiating for a year with JBS Swift & Co. about break times for Muslim workers.

A civil-rights group holds little hope that a week-old dispute between Muslim workers and their bosses at a Greeley slaughterhouse will end quickly, based on the company’s recent response in a similar standoff in Nebraska.

Should a man be forced to shave his beard for work if it violates his religious beliefs?
Abal Zaidi, who is Muslim, refused to shave and now alleges that’s why he lost his job as a Kane County correctional officer in Geneva. Last week, he sued the Kane County Sheriff’s Department, where he worked from July to December 2006.