OMAHA — Meatpacking plant officials accused of discriminating against dozens of Somali Muslim workers have offered to tweak break times to help accommodate the workers’ prayer demands.

If the dozens of Muslim workers and Swift & Co. can agree on details, a solution could defuse the dispute that started earlier this year when 120 workers at the Grand Island plant abruptly quit because they weren’t allowed to pray at sunset.

Many say they were fired, quit or were verbally and physically harassed over the issue, and some have complained to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission about the way they were treated.

In a letter to lawyers representing the workers, Swift said it could eliminate some breaktime conflicts, and offered to negotiate more scheduling flexibility with the union to allow more prayer time if the workers agreed to the proposal.

Advocates for the workers said Thursday that they were encouraged by the proposal, but said they would not accept a solution that did not accommodate the prayers for the whole year.

“We’ll continue negotiations with the company and hopefully we’ll come out with a solution that everybody can deal with,” said Rima Kapitan, a lawyer for the Council on American-Islamic Relations who is representing the workers in the dispute. “We’re certainly not going to accept their proposals at their face.”

The five to 10-minute prayer, known as the maghrib, must be done within a 45-minute window around sunset, according to Muslim rules. Workers at the Grand Island plant say they quit, were fired or were verbally harassed over the issue.

Tensions at the plant boiled over in May, when 120 Somali workers abruptly quit for similar reasons. About 70 returned a week later, but the issue resurfaced through the late spring as sunset came later in the evening shift.

Swift spokesman Dan Schult said Thursday he would not publicly comment on the negotiations, saying only that they were ongoing.

But a lawyer for Swift said in a letter it would be possible to make prayer accommodations for most, but not all of the entire year. The Council on American-Islamic Relations provided a copy of the letter to The Associated Press.

“Swift concludes that it can potentially accommodate the maghrib prayer under the existing labor agreement, except on the following dates: Feb. 15 through March 8 (commencement of Daylight Savings Time), and May 23 through Aug. 1,” Swift attorney Donald Selzer wrote in the letter dated Aug. 20.

The company also offered to go to union representatives to negotiate lengthening the dinner break window if the workers agreed to the proposal. Lengthening the window would mean fewer days when prayers could not be accommodated, Swift said.

But the president of the local United Food and Commercial Workers Union said Thursday that changing the breaks might not be feasible for other workers in the plant.

“I don’t know that I can agree to that because I have 1,700 other people to worry about,” said Dan Hoppes, Local 22 union president. “I have to look and see what they’ve got in mind.”

Any changes could be a problem for other workers because supervisors at the plant determine breaks within allotted times, not the workers themselves.

Hoppes said he wouldn’t have a problem if the company allowed individual workers to take breaks.

“But that’s simply not the case,” Hoppes said. “That’s the problem with the breaks is they have to be uniform.”

The sides have been negotiating as representatives for the workers have been filing complaints with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Only a few have been filed so far as statements and signatures are gathered from the workers, but more are expected, said Mohamed Rage, chairman of the Omaha Somali-American Community Organization.

In a different case, the commission ruled in July it had cause to believe a Minnesota plant discriminated against Somali workers for their religion, said Joe Snodgrass, a lawyer representing the workers.

Snodgrass said the commission’s finding would help the Somalis’ federal case against Gold’n Plump Poultry, and Kapitan said it would also help negotiations for the Somali workers in Grand Island.

“There seems to be a lot of bias right now for this group of Americans,” Snodgrass said Thursday. “With 9/11 and the Iraq war, it’s just a group of Americans that’s encountering a lot of discrimination right now.”

EEOC spokesman David Grinberg said federal law prohibited the commission from confirming or denying any finding until the EEOC sues an employer. He said the commission had not sued Gold’n Plump.

Grinberg said religious discrimination cases make up a small percentage of the EEOC’s total cases, but are growing faster than other kinds of cases.

Additionally, yearly complaints from Muslims have doubled in the last 10 years, from 221 in 1996 to 594 in 2006, Grinberg said.