Excerpt:
As many as 100 Somali Muslims who are current and former workers at Gold'n Plump Inc. will receive a total of $365,000 in a settlement of federal lawsuits alleging religious discrimination at the company's chicken processing plants in Cold Spring, Minn., and Arcadia, Wis.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) alleged in a lawsuit filed in September that St. Cloud-based Gold'n Plump violated federal law by terminating Somali workers who prayed during their work shifts. The EEOC alleged in a separate lawsuit that the Work Connection Inc., an employment agency in St. Paul, required applicants for jobs at Gold'n Plump to sign forms acknowledging that they might be required to handle pork.