The Council on American-Islamic Relations plans to file a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission after Brillion-based Ariens fired seven employees under a policy prohibiting unscheduled breaks for prayer.
“There has been a pattern of discriminatory and unfair treatment that these Somali and Muslim workers have endured,” said Maha Sayed, CAIR civil rights staff attorney.
Sayed said the complaint, to be filed with the EEOC office in Milwaukee in the next few weeks, is “the next logical step.”
Ariens fired seven employees earlier this month after instituting a new policy that required employees to pray only during scheduled breaks. The new policy affected a total of 53 employees with 32 choosing to stay with the company and work within the new policy. The seven were fired for taking unscheduled breaks and 14 resigned.
Officials with the company were reviewing CAIR’s announcement when reached for comment Monday. The company previously said it would have like to have seen more employees stay.
“We respect their faith, we respect the work they have done for Ariens Company and we respect their decisions,” a company statement said at the time of the firings.
Under federal law, companies are required to accommodate “an employee’s sincerely held religious beliefs or practices unless the accommodation would impose an undue hardship (more than a minimal burden on operation of the business).”
Sayed suggested during a press conference in Green Bay that not all those who resigned did so willingly and some were “coerced” into leaving.
She added the goal would be to get the terminated employees back pay and get them their jobs back. She said CAIR officials had met with over two dozen employees, but the exact number to be represented in the EEOC complaint “remains fluid.”
Jaylani Hussein, CAIR-Minnesota executive director, said his organization has been concerned with an increase in Islamophobia in recent months and “some of those concerns have been reinforced.”
He said a mosque in Green Bay was vandalized and broken into three times since the story about Ariens’ new policy broke. He said his group is requesting the FBI join the Green Bay police in investigating the incidents.
Hussein also alleged the company had not reached out to the mosque like it had claimed to have done.
“We believe the company has not really engaged in a conversation to understand what would work,” he said.
