Hot news from Shelbyville: Union overturns controversial contract

Just in from the Times-Gazette of Shelbyville, TN (see last Friday’s report that started all this):

Members of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) and Tyson Foods workers at the poultry processing plant in Shelbyville overwhelmingly voted to overturn a union contract that replaced Labor Day as a paid holiday with the Muslim festival of Eid al-Fitr, it was announced this morning.

The new agreement will increase the number of paid days off for workers in the current calendar year to include both Labor Day and the Muslim observance as paid holidays for workers in the Shelbyville plant.

The agreement amends the existing contract negotiated last year, according to a press release from the RWDSU.

In a statement by Tyson spokesperson Libby Lawson, the food processing giant made this request on behalf of its Shelbyville plant employees, “some of whom had expressed concern about the new contract provisions relative to paid holidays.”

“In an effort to be responsive, Tyson asked the union to reopen the contract to address the holiday issue, and the union agreed to do so.” Lawson said. 

Although Labor Day is back as a paid holiday,  the Muslim holiday is still on for all plant workers:

The RWDSU membership voted overwhelmingly Thursday to reinstate Labor Day as one of the plant’s paid holidays, while keeping Eid al-Fitr as an additional paid holiday for this year only.

The more interesting part of this article came at the end when Bedford County Mayor Eugene Ray told Tysons that they attracted the Somalis to Shelbyville and it was thus their duty to assimilate them.

Mayor Ray also said that a lot of work needs to be done to help the Somalis “get along with people, how to work with people … and how to be kind to one another.”

This is in reference to the frequent reports from the public of the refugee’s “rude and demanding” attitude that the T-G reported in the Somalis on Shelbyville series published in December 2007.

Ray said he is “still working on that,” meeting with Imam Haji Yousuf, of Shelbyville’s Muslim mosque.

The mayor said the problems stem from the customs of the Somalis, “not them (the refugees) so much, but the way they are used to operating in their country, which is more aggressive than most people that come here.”

“Their custom is to negotiate everything, but here you go into stores, you don’t negotiate, you make your mind up if you want to pay for it or not.”

“They’re here, they are part of the community, they are part of the economy, so it’s not like you can just tell them to leave … but Tyson is the reason why they are here, they are attracted by them, they come from different places to work here,” Ray said.

“Tyson’s got a big stake in this to help the community, to orientate the people (Somalis) to be kind, to be nice, to be polite,” Ray said.

I predict this last will be hard to do because we (non-Muslims) are all infidels and that is the root of this arrogance we are seeing.

P.S. I would still like to know what was going on in that Shelbyville mosque a few weeks ago prior to a Somali going on a rampage.  Maybe Mayor Ray can ask the Imam when he meets with him.

LEARN MORE ABOUT SOMALI ISSUES IN AMERICA BY JUST TYPING ‘SOMALIS’ INTO OUR SEARCH FUNCTION.

Laura Bush visits Burmese refugees in Thailand camp

Michael Abramowitz reports in the Washington Post today on the First Lady’s visit to a refugee camp.

MAE SOT, Thailand, Aug 7 — With rain falling steadily outside, first lady Laura Bush sat down inside a small hut near the Thai border with Burma on Thursday and invited a group of refugees who fled one of the world’s most repressive governments to tell her what they “would like the people of the world to know” about their situation.

Our dream is to go home,” said one refugee, Mahn Htun Htun. “But there is no peace and democracy in Burma — and it’s impossible to go home.”

For the past two years, Bush has made freedom in Burma a focus of her official duties as first lady.

Laura Bush’s visit was for the purpose of drawing attention to the terrible Burmese government.  At the camp, she spoke to the media about Burma’s twenty years of repressive military rule. And while she was visiting the camp, the President was having lunch with Burmese dissidents.

He also spoke about Burma in a radio interview heard inside that country. Together, we seek an end to tyranny in Burma,” the president said in a policy address in Bangkok. “The noble cause has many devoted champions, and I happen to be married to one of them.”

Although most of the emphasis of her visit seemed to be on the Burmese government, and life in the camp, she also spoke about resettlement. She met with a Karen woman named Hay Lary, who asked for more help for the camp, especially education. Lary is set to move to South Carolina with her husband and five children.

Her family is part of an increasing flow of Burmese refugees to the United States, especially members of the Karen minority. According to Bush and her aides, roughly 30,000 Burmese have emigrated to the United States since 2005. The number has surged, officials said, since Congress undid what the officials termed a technicality in the law that penalized many prospective refugees because of an insurgency being mounted by some of the Karen inside Burma.

Now here’s an oddity. The online article says this:

Bush made clear that while her preference was for refugees to return home, that is not possible under current conditions. [End of paragraph]

The newspaper adds this:

She met with Lary and other families poised to emigrate. She urged Americans to support the refugees and the voluntary groups that help them.

We’ve written about the Karen refugees many times. They are mostly Christian and seem to fit the stereotype of hardworking, law-abiding immigrants. The First Lady is correct to emphasize the repressive Burmese government that makes it impossible for them to go home. They want to go home. Coming to America is a last resort for them. As in so many cases of refugees in camps, I wonder whether our money would be better spent improving their conditions there than bringing a small percentage of them here.

What is up in Ft. Morgan, CO? Meatpacking and Somalis again?

Yesterday someone sent me this announcement for an upcoming visit of representatives of the Office of Refugee Resettlement to Ft. Morgan, CO.    Something called the Integration Work Group will meet with people in the community.  

Representatives from the Office of Refugee Resettlement Integration Work Group will be visiting Fort Morgan on Thursday, Aug. 14.

They will arrive at Morgan Community College’s Adult Basic Education Building, 117 Main St., at 10:15 a.m. At 10:30 they will be introduced to OneMorgan County and the community with an overview of the program. This brief overview will be followed by a roundtable conversation.

At 1:30 p.m., the representatives plan to arrive at Cargill Meat Solutions. They will meet with Cargill staff in hopes of gaining insight into the Cargill perspective on the new refugee workforce. They will be learning about dynamics, recruitment, adjustment and integration.

My antennae went up—isn’t this another Somali resettlement city?  Yes, and it is home to giant meatpacking company Cargill.  Just last summer I wrote that a Refugee Resettlement Office was opening in the Greeley/Ft. Morgan area to accomodate incoming Somalis.  See my posts here and here.

I noticed that in those posts (a year ago!) I was guessing that this refugee resettlement office was being set up to facilitate a meatpacking company, it sure looks like it.    The meatpacker gets these LEGAL immigrant workers while the taxpayer takes care of all their other needs—healthcare, housing, schools, integration and so on.   Even groups like this OneMorgan County mentioned in the meeting announcement is funded with tax dollars.

I started searching around for more information, but there is so much stuff on Cargill and Ft. Morgan Somalis and meatpackers that I couldn’t absorb it all.  I did find this interesting bit I wanted to share here because I wonder how leftist do-gooders can reconcile their professed charity toward refugees with the fact that these refugees are working for what other leftists call monsters.   According to reports like this one, Cargill has its greedy fingers in all sorts of destructive activities around the world, like in Somalia of all places:

For example, Cargill dumped grain in Somalia at one-ninth the local farmer’s price, thereby greatly destroying the traditional subsistence economy of Somalia.

I don’t know if this is true, but some leftwing groups think so.  

We followed Shelbyville, TN  and Emporia, KS from near the beginning, so we have a handle on those conflicts, and now we need to get a handle on Ft. Morgan.    I’m looking for readers to send links to the comments on this article and maybe we can all educate each other about Ft. Morgan—good or bad.  If everything is just going great at Ft. Morgan and Somalis are assimilating and folks are happy, tell us that too.

Anyone live closeby in Colorado who could pop over to this meeting?