It wasn’t quite the New Year some Cargill employees were looking for.

But after being fired from their jobs at the Cargill Meat Solutions plant in Fort Morgan, about 200 Muslim employees who left work to protest the plant’s religious accommodations are still hoping to return.

In December, many of the employees, most of whom are Somali, said managers had stopped allowing them to take the five-minute breaks for prayer that their religion requires.

Cargill representatives denied this claim, but the employees said they would not return to work until the company agreed to allow them prayer time. The plant’s management and union representatives met with Somali leaders on Dec. 22, but they were not able to resolve the disagreement. A few employees returned to work the next day, but about 190 stayed away and were terminated based on the company’s three-day “no-call, no-show” policy.

Mike Martin, director of communications for Cargill, said company policy is to let employees go to prayer one or two at a time throughout the day, to avoid slowing down operations.

“While reasonable efforts are made to accommodate employees, accommodation is not guaranteed every day and is dependent on a number of factors that can, and do, change from day to day,” he said. “This has been clearly communicated to all employees.”

The Minnesota-based Council on American-Islamic Relations has expressed support for the protestors. On Wednesday the organization’s executive director, Jaylani Hussein, along with other CAIR representatives, held a press conference at the Denver Muslim Society headquarters to explain the workers’ grievances.

The protestors are “200 families who are hard-working people, who are only asking for a simple request which they had been granted for a long period of time,” Hussein said during the press conference.

Since 2009, the Cargill plant has offered a “reflection area” where workers of all faiths are allowed to go for prayer during their shifts.

But on Dec. 19, employees were told, “If you want to pray, go home,” Hussein said.

Martin, on the other hand, said none of Cargill’s religious accommodation policies have changed.

CAIR representatives are continuing to negotiate with Cargill on the Somali workers’ behalf, with a teleconference scheduled for next week. Meanwhile, the plant is still operating both shifts during the week.

The Fort Morgan Cargill plant employs about 2,000 hourly workers, who work under a collective bargaining agreement with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters labor organization.

— The Denver Post contributed to this report