Workplace discrimination complaints by Muslims reached a record high in fiscal 2009

We reported earlier this month that JBS Swift was facing a lawsuit alleging discrimination against Muslim workers at two of its meatpacking plants. That example is one of many; Muslim workers filed a record 803 claims of employment discrimination in the federal fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2009, up 20 percent from the previous year and 60 percent from 2005, Steven Greenhouse of The New York Times reports. The number of complaints filed in the current fiscal year won't be announced until January, but with American Muslims in the spotlight, claims are expected to rise again.

"The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has found enough merit in some of the complaints that it has filed several prominent lawsuits on behalf of Muslim workers," Greenhouse writes, pointing to the one against JBS, one against retailer Abercrombie & Fitch and another against hotel company Four Points Sheraton. "There’s a level of hatred and animosity that is shocking," Mary Jo O’Neill, regional attorney of the EEOC’s Phoenix office, told Greenhouse. "I’ve been doing this for 31 years, and I’ve never seen such antipathy toward Muslim workers."

Muslims, who make up less than 2 percent of Americans, accounted for about a fourth of the 3,386 religious discrimination claims filed with the commission last year, Greenhouse reports. Claims of race, sex and age discrimination fell in fiscal 2009. The number of complains filed against Muslims even exceeds the number in the year following the 2001 terrorist attacks. "We can go back in history and find other times when there were hot emotional and political tensions over religion," Michael J. Zimmer, co-author of several books on employment discrimination and a law professor at Loyola University in Chicago, told Greenhouse. "Right now, there is a lot of heat as to the Muslims." (Read more)