BRILLION, Wis.- Ariens Company in Brillion is under fire by the Muslim community after several workers say they're being discriminated against.
Those claims are a result of a company wide policy Ariens President and CEO, Dan Ariens, will begin enforcing January 25.
On Monday just 14 of 53 Muslim employees came to work.
"They have to make a family decision, we're not making an employment decision for them," explained Ariens.
Ariens is making it clear that he's not firing anyone. He's only enforcing a policy that he says has been around for a while. The policy would limit when Muslim employees can pray on the job to just their break times. Ariens says the reason for that is because when one employee leaves the production line, all the others must stop until that person comes back.
"If you just use five minutes and you take the number of people and you put that over an annual number of days working, it's over a million dollars in cost," said Ariens.
For Khurram Ahmad, president of the Oshkosh Muslim chapter, he says he understands both sides.
"It quickly becomes a polarizing issue," said Ahmad.
Ahmad says some forms of Islam are more strict than others which could be part of the concern, but that the faith as a whole allows for wiggle room when it comes to prayer times.
"There's flexibility within the religion and one should take advantage of those flexibilities," said Ahmad.
The policy at Ariens Co. will go into affect as of January 25. All impacted employees will have to make their final decision whether to return to work or quit by that time.
