Posted on 08/08/2008 8:00:39 AM PDT by bboop
Labor Day Reinstated as Paid Holiday at Shelbyville, TN, Plant Tyson Foods Requested Change from Union -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Springdale, Arkansas - August 8, 2008 - Tyson Foods, Inc. announced today it has reached a new agreement with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), an American union, reinstating Labor Day as one of the designated paid holidays under the contract for covered employees in the Shelbyville, Tennessee, plant.
Tyson made this request on behalf of its Shelbyville plant employees, some of whom had expressed concern about the new contract provisions relative to paid holidays. In an effort to be responsive, Tyson asked the union to reopen the contract to address the holiday issue, and the union agreed to do so. The union membership voted overwhelmingly Thursday to reinstate Labor Day as one of the plant's paid holidays, while keeping Eid al-Fitr as an additional paid holiday for this year only. This means that in 2008 only, Shelbyville employees will have nine paid holidays.
For the remainder of the five-year contract period, the eight paid holidays will include: New Year's Day, Martin Luther King Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day and a Personal Holiday, which could either be the employee's birthday, Eid al-Fitr or another day requested and approved by their supervisor.
This issue concerns only the plant at Shelbyville, Tennessee. Labor Day has always been celebrated, and continues to be, at the other 118 Tyson plants across the country.
The Shelbyville complex employs approximately 1,200 people. Approximately 1,000 workers are covered by the RWDSU union agreement at that location.
Let’s check in with them next year to see if they are still “honoring” the Muslim holiday that is “just for this year”.
It doesn’t matter. I still won’t buy their crappy chicken. Spend a little more and help your local farmer.
Yup.
That’s okay, I’m still not going to buy their products. I’m a proud boycotter of Tyson since the early 90’s.
Too little, too late.
Frank Perdue’s little company will get my business. Too bad Frank isn’t around anymore. RIP Frank.
Too late! I’m still mad that they have imported 700 Muslums to Shelbyville Tn.. What kind of idiot idea is that?
As I stated in my email to them I will NEVER allow one of their products to enter my home.
“Spend a little more and help your local farmer.”
Tyson Foods is the largest poultry producer in the world with poultry plants all over America. They have over a hundred thousand employees and thousands of farmers out there contract with them to grow chickens to be delivered to their processing plants. Chances are pretty good your local farmer with chicken houses is growing those chickens for Tyson’s, especially if you live in the South or the East. They don’t appear to produce much chicken west of Texas, but from the Midwest on East they’re everywhere. I found a link to their “locations” page: http://www.tyson.com/Corporate/AboutTyson/Locations/ListPage.aspx
The US Government imported Somali refugees to Tennessee.
Tyson put them to work. I suppose you prefer welfare for them?
Imagine that.....but they are not going to be on my shoppin’ list.
I will continue to buy great tasting chicken from the Amish until I find out they are closed to celebrate the Muslim holiday.
I'm in a major poultry producing area where Tyson foods and many other poultry producers have a presence, and they all do the same things. They've all hired a lot of refugees. They don't really care if their employees are educated or if they speak English. They just want people who will work hard in a nasty job even when they start out at about minimum wage and don't even get good raises. When Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian refugees came in in the 1970’s the chicken plants were recruiting them and bringing them out to the towns where the plants were. The same thing happened with refugees and asylum seekers from El Salvador, Guatemala, etc. And of course all of these poultry producers have hired countless illegal aliens. Tyson Foods has been the most visible in this regard because they're the biggest with many tens of thousands of line workers in their chicken plants and hatcheries and other facilities. They have over a hundred thousand employees total. The smaller companies have been just as guilty as Tysons but Tysons is the one we all talk about.
I used to teach business law night classes at a local university and over the years I had a couple of human resource managers from chicken plants trying to get their bachelors degrees so they could move on to better jobs. Normally people need to have college degrees before they get jobs like these guys had, but they were fluent in Spanish, so the chicken plants wanted them. They didn't work for Tysons. If you were to walk in any of these plants you'd find that most all of the employees are Mexicans or Central Americans. More and more of them are legal, but a lot of them are working with bogus documents and in a lot of cases their employers know it. I've heard stories of chicken plants actually recruiting people down in Mexico, helping them get across the border and get up here and helping them get the bogus docemunts they need. I know some of that sort of thing has gone on.
Dont forget Hutterite chickens. Best damn yardbird on the planet.
I had dinner with a large group of Hutterite young people several years ago. Very nice kids.
Somehow, I doubt that the U.S. Government imported Somali refugees to Sheblyville Tn..
“Somehow, I doubt that the U.S. Government imported Somali refugees to Sheblyville Tn..”
Actually a resettlement group worked with the US government is responsible for locating them in Tennessee, at the desire of Tyson. Many of them have been found with TB.
http://bearcreekledger.com/2007/11/30/tyson-foods-now-importing-somali-refugees-for-cheap-labor/
Good article about this in the archives. For as ‘backward’ as this group is, they sure learned to make demands fast:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/853758/posts
New world awaits Bantus seeking refuge in Atlanta
[snip] The U.S. State Department says it has approved plans to resettle the Bantus in 31 states, including Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. Refugee resettlement agencies expect to shepherd up to 635 Bantus in the next two years into apartments in Clarkston, Decatur and Stone Mountain.
That will make metro Atlanta one of the top destinations for Somali Bantus, along with Dallas, Houston, Phoenix and Salt Lake City, the State Department said.
A cultural challenge
They will come in need of more help than most refugees. Few speak English. Many cannot read or write even in their native language. Only in the last few months have most seen telephones, flush toilets and clocks, in classes on American culture at the Kakuma Refugee Camp, on the sweltering plain of northwest Kenya. Some saw a bathtub for the first time and asked whether it was some sort of boat, said Sasha Chanoff, who coordinates the classes for the International Organization for Migration.
“They really don’t have any exposure to modern development,” he said.
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