Somali Women Charge UPS with Religious Discrimination

Eight women, of Somali background, who had worked for a UPS sorting center in Toronto have taken the company to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal because they feel they were discriminated on religious grounds. The 8 women worked for UPS through a temp agency and when the sorting facility became unionized the company told the women they would need to lose their flowing dresses or not come in to work.

What the article is missing is that the flowing dresses would present a health and safety hazard. Flowing dresses could easily get tangled up in the machinery of the sorting plant. Since the facility became unionized I'm sure the company became a lot more strick about health safety issues. CBC

The firing of eight Toronto women by the giant package delivery company UPS goes before a federal human rights tribunal on Monday.

The women, all of them of Somali origin, were working as temporary employees for the global delivery company. They claim UPS discriminated against them when it refused to hire them permanently.

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Hagi, Yusuf and the other Somali women always wore ankle-length skirts to work.

Hagi said UPS never mentioned their clothing posed a safety hazard during the time she worked as a temp. But when a new union contract forced UPS to hire the women away from the temp agency and give them permanent jobs with better pay and benefits, Hagi says, everything changed.

Yusuf said her supervisor gave her an ultimatum: "You have to pull up your skirt above the knee, otherwise go out."