BRILLION, WI (WTAQ) – Ariens Company President and CEO Dan Ariens is speaking out regarding the controversy over an employee break policy which led to a group of Muslim workers saying it will force them to quit.
Last week, 53 Muslim employees told the media that the “new” prayer-on-the-job policy will force them to leave.
“This is a break policy we’ve had in place, the employees voted on it themselves back in the mid-80s,” said Ariens on Monday. “So we’re adhering to a policy we’ve had for years.”
Ariens says they spoke with the Somalian group last week after other workers were tired of them walking off in the middle of a shift to go pray. The response was fairly negative.
“It was not an eruptive kind of meeting, it was a lot of questions and why are you doing this now,” said Ariens. “This seems to have worked for us and why can’t it work for you? And I explained that we’re going to start the most disciplined adherence to the policy on January 25.”
Ariens explained that leadership on the plant floor tried to accommodate and work around the daily prayer issue over the summer, but that other employees spoke up saying that it wasn’t fair to the general workforce.
“Many of them (Muslim workers) left and went home after the meeting,” said Ariens. “We started to have discussions on Friday and what they did was call WBAY-TV and we started a news cycle, instead of just dealing with this internally.”
So far, Ariens says, just 10 workers have come back to them and said they were willing to work with the policy. The rest remain unknown what their future holds, but Ariens says he would like them to stay with the company.
SOCIAL MEDIA REACTION
Since the story first made its rounds on the Internet, Ariens says the response has been overwhelming.
“Well into 90 percent, people saying this is reasonable, this is a work environment, you’re not a place of worship you’re a place of work,” says Ariens. “I’m a little disappointed in the anti-Muslim rhetoric. These are good people that work for us, we’d still like them to come back and work for us under the policy.”
Ariens reiterates that it’s not about religion, it’s about productivity.
“You just can’t have a team member walk off an assembly line to go pray, while the other 7, 8 or 9 people are there trying to pick up the slack,” said Ariens. “It’s very logical for most of us, it’s a pretty easy conclusion.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations has contacted Ariens about this issue, hoping that they will change their mind about the policy.
Ariens says that this is an issue he wants to handle within the walls of the Brillion-based company, not in the court of public opinion.
