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The Shelbyville, Tennessee Times-Gazette reports:
Tyson drops Labor Day holiday for Eid al-Fitr
Workers at Tyson Foods' poultry processing plant in Shelbyville will no longer have a paid day off on Labor Day, but will instead take the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr in the fall.Even if the plant were 100% muslim that would still be a dangerous and outrageous sign of the decline of our national culture.
A recent press release from the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) stated that a new contract at the Shelbyville facility "implements a new holiday to accommodate the ... Muslim workers at the plant."
However, 250 of the 1200 workers there are Somali, and no more than 700 total are muslims.
Eid al-Fitr means "Festival of the Breaking of the Fast" in Arabic, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, and marks the end of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting.One wonders then why the muslims also get Christmas off.
The festival "is distinguished by the performance of communal prayer (salat) at daybreak on its first day. It is a time of official receptions and private visits, when friends greet one another, presents are given, new clothes are worn, and the graves of relatives are visited," the encyclopedia said.
Mickelson said that "Eid al-Fitr is one of eight paid holidays for all Team Members covered by the contract, while Labor Day is not a paid holiday."
"Based on the contract, the other paid holidays include: The Team Member's birthday, New Year's Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day," Mickelson said.
"Implementing this holiday was a challenge, since it falls on a different day every year and is declared on fairly short notice," RWDSU Representative Randy Hadley said in the press release. "But the negotiating committee felt this was extremely crucial, since this holiday is as important to Muslims as Christmas is to Christians."
I would also assert that 100% of the workers at the plant are, you know, workers, and Labor Day was created as a National Holiday just for them!
The pandering and special treatment continues:
The union also claimed that in addition to the observance of the Muslim holiday, "two prayer rooms have been created to allow Muslim workers to pray twice a day and return to work without leaving the plant."No other faith has a special prayer room of course.
Mickelson said that Shelbyville's Tyson plant "does have a prayer room to accommodate the needs of Muslim Team Members."
I've never been a big fan of the labor movement, but Labor Day is an American holiday that should not just be thrown away for the alien habits of foreign cultures. From the US Department of Labor,
"Labor Day differs in every essential way from the other holidays of the year in any country," said Samuel Gompers, founder and longtime president of the American Federation of Labor. "All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man's prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day...is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation."That a union would request dropping Labor Day from its own contract to add ramadan is diabolical
Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.
Don't buy Tyson, it's un-American.
