You’ll remember the big immigration raid on Agriprocessors in Postville Iowa. The blog Failed Messiah has been keeping track of developments.
Well, now Agriprocessors is having trouble finding replacement workers. Seems people don’t like the working conditions. They struck out with an Iowa employment agency, and then with a group of American Indians who had been working at another of their plants. So they’re shipping in homeless people for out of state now.
Meanwhile, it’s also come out that one of the supervisors was running a scam that involved a fake dealership selling junky cars to illegals who were looking for work at Agriprocessors–and as a side light, evidence is coming out that the company not only knew at least some of these people were illegal aliens, but supplied them with fake documentation.
By the way, the supervisor has found a sudden need to relocate to Israel.
UPDATE 6/25/08
Hmm. Two people who’ve never seem to have visited the blog before offer proAgriprocessors comments within an hour of each other, four days after the original post. Of course, that’s not proof of a concerted effort on behalf of Agriprocessors…
June 24, 2008 at 4:16 pm |
Oy! I’m sure the meat is by-the-book kosher, but if I were an observant Jew (or any kind of Jew at all), I don’t think I’d be eating it. Is there a generally-recognized sin called “stacking fuel for the crematoria”?
June 24, 2008 at 9:37 pm |
There are moves afoot from both the MOs (Modern Orthodox–the ones that don’t mind men wearing normal clothes and kids going to college) and Conservative to boycott the company. The problem is that Agriprocessors has a monopoly or near monopoly in many areas of the country. For instance, all three kosher butchers that are relatively close to me at home or at work carry only Rubashkin meat. Publix carries Empire, but only Empire poultry. If I want kosher steak or veal or lamb chops, I have no choice but to buy Agriprocessors.
June 25, 2008 at 6:22 pm |
This information is completely false or twisted, as I’m sure all the accusations on Iowa’s major meatpacker have been. I have a friend at Jacobs & Co, and they said they are still working with AgriProcessors finding good workers for them. I doubt homeless people are being shipped out. They need people who know what they are doing. AgriProcessors wouldn’t have been the most successful Kosher meatpacking distributor in America if these accusations were true.
June 25, 2008 at 6:59 pm |
I think the real issue here is that we hear from all of the detractors and “supporters”, but never from Agriprocessors itself.
I believe that there are two sides to a story. Let’s hear the side we don’t yet know.
There is a lot of gossip, a lot of accusations, but what is real?
June 25, 2008 at 11:49 pm |
Agriprocessors position in the kosher meat business has a lot to do with communal politics in the Orthodox world, and very little with these accusations, which have only started in the last few years. It is symptomatic of the problems Orthodox Judaism faces at the communal level–leaders more interested in money than in Torah values, and leaders more interested in making their own position secure and not interested in actually helping their communities.
Agriprocessor’s side of the story seems to be trying to dismiss this all as unimportant or lashon harah, and equating an attack on Agriprocessors as an attack on the Orthodox community–but not really trying to refute the accusations. And there is some real solid evidence behind the accusations. However, if you go through the posts at Failed Messiah, you’ll find what seems to be a fairly complete reporting of Agriprocessor’s reaction, even if FM is definitely biased against them, and interprets all statements accordingly.
August 12, 2008 at 1:48 pm |
[...] In the wake of the Agriprocessors raid, there’s a movement afoot for an additional optional certification for kosher meat [...]