October 7, 2011, - 2:19 pm
After Years of Islamo-Pandering, Hertz Suspends Muslims Who Prayed on Company Time
Don’t applaud dhimmi car rental company Hertz for this, as it took a federal lawsuit by non-Muslims to reach this result. Two years ago, I told you about non-Muslims who sued Hertz in federal court because Hertz gave at least a half-hour in paid breaks (and other special privileges) to Muslims for prayers, but didn’t give non-Muslims the same paid breaks and privileges. After they filed their class-action suit, the non-Muslims, Katie Barkley, Shirley Harris, and a class of other non-Muslim Hertz employees, surprisingly got the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission to finally intercede, and Hertz agreed to require Muslims to clock out and take non-paid breaks for prayer. Since many of Hertz’s Muslim bus drivers continue to pray on the job and won’t clock out, today Hertz was forced to suspend those workers. Again, this isn’t a “Yay, Hertz!” moment, as one reader suggested it was. It’s something Hertz had to do after years of pandering to Muslims, because if the pandering continued, there would be more lawsuits against Hertz and steeper penalties.
More:
In the three years she’s worked as a shuttle driver for Hertz at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Zainab Aweis, had always taken time out of her shift each day to pray.
An observant Muslim, she prays five times a day — with one, sometimes two of those prayer times falling during her shift.
“That was the one benefit of the job,” the 20-year-old said.
On Friday, she and 33 other drivers — all of them Somali Muslims — were suspended indefinitely from their jobs after they took religious breaks to pray while at work without first clocking out.
A spokesman for Teamsters Local 117, which represents the workers, said it is trying to get the workers back on the job.
Both the company and the union late Thursday said they were waiting to hear back from the other.
While the drivers were allowed two, 10-minute breaks during their work shifts during which they could pray, Teamsters officials said managers had agreed in negotiations that workers would not have to clock out and in, though the contract itself does not address the matter.
And the workers and their union said Hertz had previously not required that workers clock out for prayer. The union said it has filed an unfair-labor-practices complaint with the National Labor Relations Board against Hertz for failing to notify the union in advance of what it called a policy change.
But Hertz said the rules aren’t new; that it had been trying for some time to enforce the terms of an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission settlement it reached with the workers two years ago that required them to clock out.
A Hertz spokesman said the workers had been repeatedly told they needed to clock out and that the 34 suspended workers had not complied.
“We felt it was reasonable for our Muslim employees who need to pray a couple times during the workday to clock in and clock out,” said Rich Broome, spokesman for Hertz. . . .
He pointed out that Muslim workers who clocked out were not suspended.
On Wednesday, a few dozen people from area labor and faith organizations protested on behalf of the workers outside the Hertz counter at the airport, waving signs saying, “Respect me, Respect my religion.”
The Teamsters represents about 79 drivers at Hertz — about 70 percent of whom are Muslim — earning between $9.15 and $9.95 an hour. They receive no health benefits, vacation or sick leave. . . .
Mohamed Hassan, of the Somali Community Services Coalition, said the workers cannot afford to be away from their jobs. “They need to pay rent and buy food for their children.”
So sad, too bad. You want the job, do the time. And clock out for your prayers to the moon god. Jews (whose prayer schedule was stolen by Muslims and expanded) pray three times a day, and they don’t demand paid time at work to do it. Even if they did, they wouldn’t get it.
It’s yet another example of what I’ve been saying since well before 9/11: Muslims don’t want to be treated equally. They want special rights–more rights–than everybody else. And they usually get them when they whine loud enough. That’s America for you. As George Orwell wrote, all of the animals in the barnyard are equal, but some are more equal than others . . . namely the religion of jihad, terrorist attacks, and mass murderers of 3,000 Americans.
Tags: breaks, EEOC, Hertz, Hertz Car Rental, Hertz Rent-a-Car, Katie Barkley, Mohamed Hassan, Muslims, NLRB, paid breaks, prayer, Rich Broome, Seattle, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Shirley Harris, Somali, Somali Community Services Coalition, Somali Muslims, Somalia, Somalian, Somalian Muslims, suspends Muslims, Teamsters, Teamsters Local 117, unpaid breaks, Zainab Aweis
You know, Hertz could get these drivers to quit if they just added an l, and changed the name to Hertzl.
Jonathan E. Grant on October 7, 2011 at 3:02 pm