RWDSU UNION DROPS LABOR DAY FOR SACRED MUSLIM HOLIDAY

Members of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) who work at the Tyson Foods poultry processing plant in Shelbyville, Tennessee, have exchanged their paid Labor Day holiday for the sacred Muslim holiday marking the end of Ramadan.

To accommodate Muslim workers, union committee members made the Muslim celebration of Eid al-Fitr a top priority in last November’s contract negotiations. As part of the new contract, Muslim workers were also given a prayer room.

“Eid al-Fitr is one of eight paid holidays for all team members covered by the contract, while Labor Day is not a paid holiday.”—Gary Mickelson, Media Relations Director for Tyson Foods

Approximately 250 employees at the plant are political refugees from Somalia, and most, if not all, of them are believed to be Muslim. Eighty percent of the plants’ 1,000 union members approved the new contract.

The holiday swap does not affect any of Tyson’s 118 other plants.

[The Muslim call to prayer is] ”one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.”—Barack Obama

(H-T Chuck Lehmann, Chuck on the Right Side)

I.M. Kane

For more on the story, see Tyson Plant Drops Labor Day for Muslim Holiday.

Read Full Post »

IRELAND SET TO OVERRIDE CHURCH’S CONFESSIONAL PRIVILEGE LAW

The Irish government would prosecute Catholic priests for not reporting child sex-abuse crimes heard in confessionals. Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny said the proposed law, which could imprison clerics for up to five years, would override the Church’s confessional privilege law that forbids priests from disclosing information shared during confession.

“The law of the land should not be stopped by a crozier or a collar.”—Enda Kenny, Irish Prime Minister

The Cloyne report issued this week accused the Catholic hierarchy of following Church law instead of government guidelines to protect children. According to the report, the Church hierarchy not only failed to report pedophile priests in the Church, but it also continued to cover up acts of pedophilia as recent as 2009.

The Irish Government went on to condemn the Church’s conduct in the clerical child abuse inquiries as “disgraceful and unacceptable.”  

The Cloyne report covers a 13-year period up to 2009 and contains devastating criticisms of the Holy See.

“[T]he Popish hierarchy I execrate as diabolical confusion, established for the very purpose of making God himself to be despised, and of exposing the Christian religion to mockery and scorn.”—John Calvin

I.M. Kane

For more on the story, see Priests face prosecution if they don’t tell about crimes confessed to them.

Read Full Post »