A Muslim advocacy group that last year helped mediate a worker dispute at a JBS Swift & Co. packing plant in Nebraska on Thursday said it hopes to do the same in Greeley where 103 Muslim workers were fired.



Officials at the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington, D.C.-based civil-rights group, said the dispute over prayer time at the Greeley slaughterhouse is the worst they've seen in the country.



"We've never seen anything like the wholesale firings to this degree, and it makes me wonder what's really going on there," council spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said Thursday.



A nearly identical rift occurred last year at a JBS packing plant in Grand Island, Neb., when Muslim workers walked off the job when they were refused prayer time. Three workers were fired for leaving stations without permission, and 90 quit.



The council filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of the workers, which is pending. Workers in Nebraska gave managers a 45-minute window in which prayer breaks were necessary; in Greeley the workers offered a 10-minute window, according to people familiar with the discussions.