I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it on SNOPES. But there is a Tyson Foods plant in Shelbyville, TN which employs 1,200 workers, 1,000 of whom through their union voted 80% in favor of replacing Labor Day (of all holidays) with Eid al-fitr, a Muslim holiday falling immediately after Ramadan. At least 700 of the 1,000 workers are Muslim, and 250 of them are Somali refugees. Snopes reports that there are over 1,100 Somali refugees living in the Shelbyville area. How can this happen? It's all about numbers and economics. See below.
American Renaissance News picked up on a related story in the WSJ in early June about JBS Swift and Co. losing all their illegal alien employees in an ICE crackdown, and replacing them with refugee workers making over $12 per hour (nearly twice the minimum wage). Read the whole article HERE.
No word yet if Swift's employees have voted to replace traditional American holidays with Muslim ones. The two articles do show that large manufacturing companies who cannot move their plants to Mexico or Central America where the labor is cheap, will do whatever they can to bring them here, legally or illegally. Either way, American workers seem to lose out.
But not everyone agrees American workers are hurt. “There are millions more jobs in the U.S. economy than there are legal workers to fill them,” says Craig Regelbrugge, co-chairman of the Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform, which represents hundreds of farmers and ranchers.
I disagree with that wholeheartedly. There may not be enough workers in the Shelbyville area, but there may be many willing workers in the Rust Belt and other areas who have seen manufacturing jobs disappear. Why not relocate those workers? The State Department does this...for REFUGEES, but not Americans. And that is how areas like Shelbyville have acquired such a high concentration of Muslims, some of whom are no doubt radical in their religious beliefs. And now we shall reap what Tyson, Swift, et al,... sow. I'm wondering if the Tyson union at Shelbyville plans to add Sharia Law to their plant's personnel manual.
Pic borrowed from Columbus Townhall.
H/T: Paul
UPDATE: Friday, 08-08-08, Tyson Foods announced that due to complaints from some employees, Labor Day is back, along with an extra personal day that Muslim employees can use for Eid al-fitr or whatever they wish.
Now if Tyson had only gotten it right the first time there wouldn't be all this uproar...AND we wouldn't have known what the State Department was up to, either
American Renaissance News picked up on a related story in the WSJ in early June about JBS Swift and Co. losing all their illegal alien employees in an ICE crackdown, and replacing them with refugee workers making over $12 per hour (nearly twice the minimum wage). Read the whole article HERE.
No word yet if Swift's employees have voted to replace traditional American holidays with Muslim ones. The two articles do show that large manufacturing companies who cannot move their plants to Mexico or Central America where the labor is cheap, will do whatever they can to bring them here, legally or illegally. Either way, American workers seem to lose out.
But not everyone agrees American workers are hurt. “There are millions more jobs in the U.S. economy than there are legal workers to fill them,” says Craig Regelbrugge, co-chairman of the Agriculture Coalition for Immigration Reform, which represents hundreds of farmers and ranchers.
I disagree with that wholeheartedly. There may not be enough workers in the Shelbyville area, but there may be many willing workers in the Rust Belt and other areas who have seen manufacturing jobs disappear. Why not relocate those workers? The State Department does this...for REFUGEES, but not Americans. And that is how areas like Shelbyville have acquired such a high concentration of Muslims, some of whom are no doubt radical in their religious beliefs. And now we shall reap what Tyson, Swift, et al,... sow. I'm wondering if the Tyson union at Shelbyville plans to add Sharia Law to their plant's personnel manual.
Pic borrowed from Columbus Townhall.
H/T: Paul
UPDATE: Friday, 08-08-08, Tyson Foods announced that due to complaints from some employees, Labor Day is back, along with an extra personal day that Muslim employees can use for Eid al-fitr or whatever they wish.
Now if Tyson had only gotten it right the first time there wouldn't be all this uproar...AND we wouldn't have known what the State Department was up to, either
4 comments:
Matt, as an old-time (retired) management labor lawyer, I think there may be a different wrinkle to this.
The article didn't exactly say that Tyson gave the union employees an EXTRA holiday. (Going from 7 to 8). It could well be that Tyson's TN plant employees always had 8 paid holidays, one of them being a "self-chosen" day, within management approval.
When the local union leaders initially caved to Muslim union membership pressure to require the Islamic holiday off for all employees, my guess is that management couldn't have cared less in economic terms. Eight paid days a year off is eight paid days a year off on the bottom line. Meanwhile, it's highly unusual, (and has been for years) for a company to grant additional benefits to employees these days, mid-contract. ("I know we're in the middle of a 3-year contract, but would you give us an additional holiday?" "Why sure, guys. The economy's doing so great, I'd be glad to!"
You may be right.
But what really irks me is that the State Department goes out of their way to move these Muslim refugees into clusters in areas where good paying jobs are too numerous for the home folks to fill, rather than the government offering tax breaks to these companies to offer to help pay to relocate American citizenry from areas where employment is scarce into areas like Shelbyville which so desperately needed employment after losing all their underpaid illegal alien workers. (nice run-on sentence)
As always, Paul, I appreciate your participation. You always bring much to the conversation.
Matt, as long as these immigrants are legal, I guess it could be argued that they should be directed to areas where they'd be more likely to be more likely to support themselves and their families.
I'm more than a little bit concerned about a federal policy that would offer U.S. citizens taxpayer dollars to move from one area of the country to another (based on federal employment analyses) to capitalize on national employment availability.
This sounds like a Russian or Chinese "Five Year Plan" to me, or a computerized "1984," where Big Brother can decide where domestic labor emigration ought to go (for the good of the country, of course.)
I'm still for the free market, in products, services, and labor.
Keep up the good work, my friend.
With all due respect, the five year plan sounds a bit of a stretch here. Certainly no more so than government paying to retrain laid off workers for other careers. It simply seems that as long as the State Dept is helping to relocate refugees, they might as well offer to help companies like Swift extend the net even wider to include Detroit and other areas hard hit by changing economic factors.
Just saying it's better for a country to help its own first. That doesn't make us communist, IMHO. Thanks for your comments.
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