Muslim employees quit manufacturing job after company changes prayer policies

Dozens of Muslim employees at a Wisconsin
manufacturing company claim that they were
forced to quit this week, after the company
changed its prayer-on-the-job policy to one that
prevents them from participating in their daily
prayers to Mecca.
WBAY-TV reported that before Thursday, Somali
Muslims employed by Ariens Manufacturing were
allowed to leave the producing line twice a shift in
order to participate in two of the five daily
prayers required by the Islamic faith.
Ariens, which is based out of Brillion, WI,
primarily manufactures snow blowers and riding
mowers:
The new policy, as told to the station by a
company spokesman, only allows the employees:
…to pray during scheduled breaks in
designated prayer rooms. Our
manufacturing environment does not allow
for unscheduled breaks in production.”
The dozens of employees affected by the policy
allege that praying only during a meal break goes
against their religion. Masjid Imam Hasan Abdi,
an employee from Green Bay, told the station:
“If someone tells you, ‘You pray on your
break,’ and the break time is not the prayer
time? It will be impossible to pray.”
Added former Ariens equipment painter, who held
out his unemployment packet as he spoke to
WBAY:
“We pray by the time. So they say, ‘If you
don’t pray at the break time,’ they give us
this [unemployment] paper to just leave.”
According to the company’s spokesman, the
policy change impacts 53 of the company’s
workers, with the majority of them opting to leave
the company as a result of the new company.
The spokesman added that the company “put a
considerable amount of effort” into finding a
solution that would work for both sides, which
included meeting with members of their Somalian
employee group.
Dan Ariens, the company’s chairman and CEO,
also wrote in an open letter posted to Twitter that
reads, in part:
“We continue to be open to any of the
employees returning to work under the new
policy…
We respect their faith, we respect the work
they have done at Ariens, and we respect
their decision regardless of their choice to
return to work or not.”


Per US law established by the the Equal
Opportunity Employment Commission on religious
tolerance in the workplace, “an employer does not
have to accommodate an employee’s religious
beliefs or practices if doing so would cause
undue hardship to the employer.”
The Council for Islamic-American Relations (CAIR)
is also calling on Ariens to reverse its policy, per
a Tweet sent on Saturday.