Ariens Manufacturing, a manufacturing company in Brillon, Wis., is under fire after it abruptly changed its prayer-on-the-job policy for Muslim employees, affecting more than 50, many of whom now say they are out of a job.
Prior to the change, which was put into effect last Thursday, Muslim employees were allowed to take five minute breaks from the production line two times per shift in order to fulfill two of the five prayers their faith requires per day. Those who prayed ensured that another employee covered for them, reported NBC's North Carolina affiliate WNCN-TV. However, now Ariens requires its Muslim employees to pray during lunch breaks.
"We are asking employees to pray during scheduled breaks in designated prayer rooms," the company said in a statement. "Our manufacturing environment does not allow for unscheduled breaks in production."
The problem, however, is that according to their faith, Muslims aren't allowed meal times since they don't align with the proper times for invocation.
"If someone tells you, 'You pray on your break,' and the break time is not the prayer time? It will be impossible to pray," one employee, Masjid Imam Hasan Abdi, argued, according to Sportact.
"We pray by the time. So they say, 'If you don't pray at the break time,' they give us this [unemployment] paper to just leave," another employee, Ibrahim Mehemmed, added.
Some employees argue that the change was due to the San Bernardino and Paris attacks perpetrated by Muslim radicals and inspired by ISIS, and hadn't been an issue before then.
"I have been 35 years in America and I've never heard of a company that is not allowing its employees to pray five minutes. It is absolutely discrimination on its face," said Adan Hurr. "Allow me to pray so that I can go back to work and do what I love to do, which is working for Ariens. But we are not allowed to do that. Yesterday what happened was just a travesty," he added, according to ABC's Green Bay affiliate WBAY-TV.
Only 10 of the 53 employees affected by the policy will stay while the rest will work elsewhere, and while Ariens says that employees who are offended by the change can come back if they so choose, the company adds it is fine either way.
"We are open to any of the employees returning to work under the new policy or will look for openings in shifts that do not coincide with prayer time," read a statement from Ariens. "We respect their faith, and we respect their decision regardless of their choice to return to work or not."
