Migration Dialogue provides timely, factual and nonpartisan information and analysis of international migration issues through five major activities: the newsletters Migration News and Rural Migration News, Changing Face and other Research & Seminars, and the Sloan West Coast Program on Science and Engineering Workers.
Contact us at migrant@primal.ucdavis.edu.
Beef. Brazilian-based JBS bought Swift in 2007; Swift's financial condition deteriorated after December 2006 raids at six plants that removed 1,200 unauthorized workers. JBS-Swift raised wages after the unauthorized workers were removed, intensified recruiting, and returned to full operation within six months.
Some of the workers hired to replace the unauthorized were Somali refugees recruited in the Minneapolis area. As legal US residents and workers, some were aggressive in requesting accommodation for their Muslim religion, including requests to adjust the dinner break during Ramadan in September 2008. Somalis at the JBS-Swift plant in Grand Island, Nebraska wanted the dinner break moved from 8:30 pm to 7:30 pm, but Latino workers opposed a compromise that would have ended the shift at 7:45 for dinner because they would lose an hour of work. A similar dispute at the JBS-Swift plant in Greeley, Colorado led to a strike and 100 Somalis being fired.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on August 31, 2009 charged that JBS-Swift engaged in a pattern and practice of discrimination in its Grand Island and Greeley plants by firing the Somalis who demanded accommodation for their religious beliefs. JBS-Swift countered that it established prayer rooms in its plants, and that the striking workers violated the union contract. JBS-Swift said: "Meatpacking provides first generation Americans jobs, and we are at the center of the melting pot" in dealing with integration issues.
Migration News is produced with the support of the John D. and Catherine T. MacAurther Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and UCB Institute of European Studies. A paper edition is available by mail for $30 domestic and $50 foreign for one year and $55 and $95 for two years. Make checks payable to Migration Dialogue and send to
Philip Martin, Department of Ag and Resource Economics, University of California, Davis, California 95616 USA.
Rural Migration News is produced with the support of the Colcom, Farm, and Giannini Foundations, and the UCD Gifford Center for Population Studies. A paper edition is available by mail for $30 domestic and $50 foreign for one year and $55 and $95 for two-years. Make checks payable to Migration Dialogue and send to
Philip Martin, Department of Ag and Resource Economics, University of California, Davis, California 95616 USA.
This network of researchers hosts seminars on labor and immigration issues affecting science and engineering workers, compiles and distributes information on these issues, and cooperates closely with the NBER's SEWP.
The Changing Face project assesses the effects of immigrant farm workers on agriculture and agricultural communities.
Include Opinion Leader Seminars, the Comparative Immigration and Integration Program, and Transatlantic Migration Policy Issue seminars.
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