Cargill settles for $1.5 million

Cargill Meat Solu­tions has agreed to pay $1.5 mil­lion to set­tle out of court with 138 peo­ple who had worked at the Fort Mor­gan plant in 2015 and were fired after claim­ing reli­gious dis­crim­i­na­tion and stag­ing a walk-out, accord­ing to an announce­ment on Fri­day from the U.S. Equal Employ­ment Oppor­tu­nity Commission.

Those claims were inves­ti­gated by the Den­ver Field Office of the U.S. Equal Employ­ment Oppor­tu­nity Com­mis­sion and resulted in find­ings in August 2017 of “rea­son­able cause to believe Somali, African and Mus­lim employ­ees were harassed, denied their requests for prayer breaks, and fired from their employ­ment at Cargill’s Fort Mor­gan, Colo., beef pro­cess­ing plant,” accord­ing to a EEOCpress release.

While set­tling on the charges so as to avoid “a pro­tracted legal pro­ceed­ing,” Cargill did not accept the EEOC find­ings, the release stated.

The com­pany also plans to “con­tinue to con­duct manda­tory train­ing for all man­age­ment and hourly per­son­nel” at the Fort Mor­gan plant, includ­ing “explain­ing employee rights under Title VIIto be free from dis­crim­i­na­tion based on their race, national ori­gin, retal­i­a­tion, and their right to be accom­mo­dated for their sin­cerely held reli­gious beliefs,” accord­ing to the EEOC.

That also is some­thing that is s out­lined in Cargill’s pol­icy sur­round­ing work­place accommodations.

“We applaud Cargill for work­ing with the charg­ing par­ties and the EEOC to reach a mean­ing­ful res­o­lu­tion enabling all par­ties to move for­ward,” said EEOC Phoenix Dis­trict Direc­tor Eliz­a­beth Cadle stated.

Click here to read this arti­cle in its entirety at The Fort Mor­gan Times