Conservatives Go Ballistic: Tyson Allows Workers (Even Muslim Workers) to Choose Day Off

Posted by D. Aristophanes, Sadly, No! at 10:42 AM on August 5, 2008.

Well, Tyson Foods and the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) have gone and done it now. They've agreed to a new labor contract at Tyson's Shelbyville, Tennessee poultry processing plant that replaces Labor Day with the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr, bringing the total of paid vacation days that cater specifically to the plant's majority Muslim workforce to a staggering one in eight.

Observers on the right are quite naturally alarmed. Rhetorical boycotts of Tyson products are gaining pixelated steam and some disinterested interlocuters have even been forced to reluctantly conclude that it's all Barack Obama's fault.

A closer inspection of the wingnutosphere reveals more selective outrage:

Hoosier Army Mom is hard put to name an activity more un-American than allowing low-paid factory workers some small say in the scheduling of their thinly distributed respites from minimum-wage drudgery amidst dangerous machinery and bloody avian viscera.

And no wonder! The ingrates who loiter about at Tyson production facilities in her home state already take home a king's ransom for their insolence, when by all accounts they ought to fall down on their knees and thank God each day that their betters banned indentured servitude in a long-ago moment of weakness.

Debbie Schlussel asks whether Tyson Foods -- in making a financially neutral non-concession to a tiny portion of the bottom rung of economic society -- may have ushered in "the beginning (or maybe the middle) of the end of America as we know it." She also finds the whole affair 'ironic,' and concludes: "The United Dhimmi States of America. Tyson Foods is just a drop in the bucket compared to what we're gonna see."

The National Review's Mark Krikorian, like Schlussel, is bemused by "the irony of a labor union dispensing with Labor Day." Indeed, there are few things more ironic than labor successfully securing what it wants from management thanks in part to the existence of a holiday commemorating labor's past successes at securing what it wanted from management.

Krikorian also bears bad tidings. In this particular instance, he cautions, "just complaining about illegal immigration won't do." And double drat to that, though it really rather won't, seeing as how the Tyson workers in question are legal immigrants. Still, if 'just complaining' remains attractive, we would advise doing it more broadly about Muslims or labor unions or people with shitty jobs who want trivial things that will make them moderately happier and not affect you in the slightest.

Or better yet, chicken in general.

On the other hand, as Krikorian suggests, you could just complain about 'elites.' It seems that "[i]n this case, we see modern elites' unwillingness to require newcomers to conform to our ways, and instead conforming to theirs." Sounds vaguely sinister, doesn't it?

To be fair, it's difficult to determine precisely whom Krikorian has in mind when he describes 'modern elites' and their reluctance to do what it takes to put Somali refugees in their place -- though it can be presumed he refers to a larger subset than just those people who employ the affected locution 'won't do.' Perhaps he's suggesting that tenured professors start breaking up union meetings ... it's hard to tell.

Krikorian's main point, we guess, is that our ancestors were enlightened enough to whip the savages when they wouldn't speak English, and goddamit, we ought to be, too.

And so, in conclusion: Fuck you, chicken. Fuck you for tasting so good and then betraying us to our enemies.

Tagged as: obama, refugees, tyson chicken, wingnutosphere, krikorian, labor day