Free Republic

JBS Swift & Co. fires about one-fourth of 400 workers who had walked off the job, demanding break time to pray during the holy month of Ramadan. The union local says it will fight the action. ... When Ramadan began Sept. 1, workers said supervisors informally gave them time to break their daylong fast at sundown. But non-Muslim employees protested, and on Friday, JBS Swift & Co. officials refused to give workers break time to pray and eat. About 400 workers left the company's meatpacking plant, which dominates this city of 90,000. By Tuesday, 250 had not returned, and Swift...

At least 130 Muslim workers at the north Greeley JBS Swift & Co. plant were fired Wednesday afternoon, apparently over a dispute involving breaks during Ramadan. At issue is a request by Muslim workers to be able to take their lunch breaks at sunset to end their fast during Ramadan... expressed their dissatisfaction with negotiations by saying, “No prayer, no work.”

More than 100 Muslim workers were fired from a Greeley slaughterhouse Wednesday after refusing to report for work a day earlier in protest of the company's refusal to allow a prayer break during the work shift. ... "This action is a direct violation of our collective-bargaining agreement," Swift said of the walkout in a statement. "Employees were told . . . failure to report to work when recalled would result in their immediate termination." ... "There were no negotiations (Wednesday), nothing," said Ahmed Mohamud, a spokesman for the workers and one of those fired Wednesday. "I honestly thought we'd work...

Wednesday, September 10, 2008Talks break down between Muslims and Swift Chris Casey Talks between JBS Swift & Co. officials and Muslim workers seeking prayer breaks during Ramadan broke down Tuesday afternoon and turned into calls of breach of contract. The roughly 250 workers, who've been suspended since walking off the job Friday night, say they will not return to work and may take legal action. They also acknowledge they may face mass terminations. A mid-afternoon meeting between the Muslim representatives and about 80 of the suspended workers grew heated in a downtown Greeley park when the representatives relayed information to...

Sixteen months ago, federal agents swept into the Panhandle town of Cactus, Texas, in Moore County as part of a massive raid of Swift & Co. beef processing plants across the country. They arrested 297 workers on immigration violations and sent hundreds more fleeing the community for fear of more raids.

WASHINGTON - The explosion of a star halfway across the universe was so huge it set a record for the most distant object that could be seen on Earth by the naked eye. The aging star, in a previously unknown galaxy, exploded in a gamma ray burst 7.5 billion light years away, its light finally reaching Earth early Wednesday. The gamma rays were detected by NASA's Swift satellite at 2:12 a.m. "We'd never seen one before so bright and at such a distance," NASA's Neil Gehrels said. It was bright enough to be seen with the naked eye. However, NASA...

The FBI is investigating a Tennessee trucking company. Agents from the FBI, Secret Service, Bureau of Immigration and Customs and several other agencies searched the Swift Transportation trucking company in Memphis on Monday. Swift Transportation dispatches more than 500 trucks per day, transporting mainly for the United Parcel Service. Employees said agents seized computers but authorities have not released what they were looking for. "I haven't a clue,” said training driver James Richardson. “All I know is all of the training activities have been put on hold right now until an investigation is over...

Texan and super-conservative Bob Perry formally endorsed Brian Klock for the Texas Congressional seat in CD-22. A Republican candidate for the District 22 congressional seat will be getting a lot of attention today with a very unique campaign ad. klockforcongress.orgIt's yet to be seen just whether it's negative or in his favor. Now in the private sector, Brian Klock remains a commander in the US Navy Reserve. He's an underdog candidate trying to gain new ground. Later Monday, his campaign will unveil a billboard (pictured above) on the Southwest Freeway near Fountainview. It shows crosshairs trained on downtown Houston, it...

Muslim workers in Neb. allege harassment By OSKAR GARCIA, Associated Press Writer 26 minutes ago Supervisors at a meatpacking plant have fired or harassed dozens of Somali Muslim employees for trying to pray at sunset, violating civil rights laws, the workers and their advocates say. The five- to 10-minute prayer, known as the maghrib, must be done within a 45-minute window around sunset, according to Muslim rules. The workers at the Swift & Co. plant in Grand Island say they quit, were fired or were verbally and physically harassed over the issue. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has drafted a...

Nineteen people were arrested at Swift & Co. meatpacking plants around the country as part of a sweep involving illegal immigrant workers at the plants, according to a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Agents made the arrests Tuesday in Cactus, Texas; Marshalltown, Iowa; Grand Island, Neb.; Worthington, Minn.; Greeley, Colo.; and Hyrum, Utah; where Swift has plants. They involved current or former Swift workers suspected of identity theft, ICE officials said in a news release. Seven of the arrests were at the Swift plant in Cactus, Texas, said Carl Rusnok, an ICE spokesman in Dallas. "Swift is to be...

AMARILLO, Texas -- Prison awaits the last four now-ex-workers of a Swift meatpacking plant in Cactus targeted in an illegal immigration bust. A federal judge in Amarillo today sentenced the final defendants of the 53 people arrested in the December 12th raid. Each pleaded guilty to charges related to false identification. Prosecutors say Jesus Gutierrez-Ramos, Manuel Castro-Pablo and Cristino Pablo-Alonzo pleaded guilty to using fraudulently obtained identity documents. Each must serve eight months in prison. Domingo Velasquez-Gutierrez pleaded guilty to the same charge and received a six-month prison term. No charges were filed against Colorado-based Swift.

GRAND ISLAND, Neb. -- On Dec. 12, just after 7:30 a.m., Superintendent Steve Joel got a call from the police chief saying "something big" was about to happen at the Swift & Co. meatpacking plant. Mr. Joel realized what that meant: Dozens of Swift workers were about to be rounded up in an immigration raid. What would happen to their children, students in his district? Would some seniors ever be able to graduate? "It was like a tornado," says the head of the Grand Island School District. The twister that struck this Midwestern town was part of far-reaching operation targeting...

AMARILLO, Texas — Six more former workers arrested during a raid of the Swift & Co. meatpacking plant in Cactus pleaded guilty to federal charges this week and could go to prison. The six entered pleas in federal court in Amarillo on Tuesday, the U.S. Attorney's Office said in a news release issued Wednesday. Charges against them stem from a December immigration raid at the Swift plant in the Panhandle conducted as part of an investigation into the use of Social Security numbers by illegal immigrants to gain employment. Four of the defendants — Jesus Gutierrez-Ramos, Domingo Velasquez-Gutierrez, Manuel Castro-Pablo...

HYRUM - There are rumors whispered among the Swift plant workers here that immigration agents will return for a second raid - the night shift might be next. But employees rarely speak openly about the Dec. 12 roundup at the Swift & Co. meat processing plant, where 158 undocumented workers were arrested. The plant hasn't been the same since the raid, employees say. Some workers never returned after the roundup. And there's a lot of work, but many new people can't cut it. "They've been hiring right and left," said Maria, a Swift employee who asked that her last name...

BOSTON - Jane Swift, whom Mitt Romney stepped over in 2002 to become governor of Massachusetts, announced Wednesday she was endorsing Sen. John McCain in the 2008 presidential race. ”Senator John McCain is a principled leader whose unwavering determination to improve the lives of Americans is admirable,” Swift said of the Arizona Republican in a statement issued by his presidential exploratory committee.

Back in June 2006, the front page of the New York Times carried news of a highly secret CIA-Treasury department intelligence program to track al Qaeda financing that drew on data supplied by a European banking consortium based in Belgium known as SWIFT. President Bush denounced the newspaper’s disclosure of the classified counterterrorism operation as “disgraceful.” Prior to publication, administration officials had strenuously warned the newspaper not to run the story, arguing, among other things, that it would endanger national security by placing the SWIFT consortium under intense pressure to stop sharing information with U.S. intelligence. Bill Keller, his paper...

Greeley-based Swift & Co. says it will consider a sale, merger or IPO after unnamed suitors approached the giant meatpacker. Swift, at more than $9 billion in revenue, is one of the nation's biggest private companies. It was part of ConAgra until the Omaha-based agri-giant sold it in 2002 to a partnership between buyout firm HM Capital - formerly Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst - and George Gillett's Booth Creek. Gillett serves as Swift's chairman. Over the five years of ownership, Swift has dealt with a Japanese beef ban that crimped sales and prompted layoffs, as well as a raid...

Attorneys representing foreign workers jailed in the recent crackdown at meatpacking plants accused immigration officials of violating a federal court order to hold bond hearings within 48 hours for the detainees. Today the attorneys asked U.S. District Court Judge John Kane for an emergency order to force the government to hold bond hearings for 61 Mayan workers from Guatemala who now are held without bond at a federal facility in El Paso, Texas. The order was for all of the roughly 260 detainees who have not had a bond hearing to receive one, attorneys said. A court filing by Jim...

DENVER - A federal judge demanded Friday that U.S. immigration officials disclose the whereabouts of 265 people arrested in a meatpacking raid last month in Colorado. U.S. District Judge John L. Kane gave Immigration and Customs Enforcement until Jan. 22 to submit a list accounting for all the detainees, including those who have been deported. "There are people in custody — there is an urgency to this," Kane said. Union attorneys are contesting the arrests at the Swift & Co. meat processing plant in Greeley, one of six Swift plants in six states that were raided Dec. 13. In all,...

One of the hoariest cliches in the immigration debate is that illegal aliens in the workforce "do the jobs Americans won't do" - hence the need for a general amnesty......Vicente Fox said it....President Bush has referred to "good, honorable, hardworking people here doing jobs Americans won't do" as he tried to drum up support for his "path to citizenship" ........ But is the conventional wisdom true? Last week, as part of a broader ID theft and illegal-document probe, ICE agents raided Swift & Co. plants in six states - rounding up hundreds of illegal workers. Yet the plants managed to...