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Agriprocessors: The Gift That Keeps On Giving |
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 by Shmarya Rosenberg, November 30, 2008 |
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Since I last posted on Agriprocessors, shortly after the company was hit with more than 9,000 counts of child labor violations, the company's "former" CEO (and still current VP) Rabbi Sholom M. Rubashkin was arrested on felony immigration and identity fraud charges. That was followed two weeks later by his second arrest on felony bank fraud charges. Rubashkin faces more than 50 years in federal prison, along with more time in state lockup.
Agriprocessors itself was indicted shortly after Rubashkin's second arrest, and the company faces millions of dollars in fines.
Early in November, Agriprocessors declared bankruptcy. Then, on November 14, the day of Rubashkin's first federal arrest, Agriprocessors missed its payroll, leaving workers – many of them already poor – without money and, in many cases, food. Production ceased shortly after.
Now Agriprocessors' court-appointed trustee, Joseph Sarachek of New York, is trying to restart production and pay workers – at least those workers who play ball with the company.
In effect, Sarachek is running a plantation with slavery replaced by indentured servitude. If workers come back to work, they will be given back wages owed to them in dribs and drabs. If they do not come back to work, they will need to wait for the final bankruptcy settlement – which means they likely will never see any money. Secured creditors like banks get paid first, and Agriprocessors has more debt now, including potential fines, than industry experts I've spoken with believe it has equity.
Sarachek told me Friday that he wants "everyone" to be repaid, but said the "budget" he has been given and US bankruptcy law prevents him from doing more for workers.
Sarachek's press release announcing the possible resumption of production and repayment of selected workers tells workers to contact plant spokesman Chaim Abrahams with questions.
Abrahams – a fierce Rubashkin partisan and a fellow member of the Chabad-Lubavitch hasidic sect – is one of the figures in Agriprocessors most distrusted by workers. Throughout the 6 1/2 month crisis, Abrahams has defended almost every action of the company. He has repeatedly denied the company abused workers or shorted their pay.
Abrahams also tried to silence Postville's community radio station, KPVL, and fire or censor its main on-air personality, Jeff Abbas. Abrahams is especially upset by Abbas' airing of interviews done with former workers, calling the bad news about the company "divisive" and bad for Postville.
Abrahams sits on the radio station's board. The station is a nonprofit, and Abrahams should have resigned from that board immediately after the May 12 raid. He did not. Instead, he tried to use his position and influence to remove Abbas.
Along with running KPVL, Abbas stepped in to fill the void left by city inaction. As Agriprocessors workers found themselves broke, hungry and sometimes homeless, Abbas lobbied state officials to bring in relief. When the mayor heard that Jewish families were going hungry because they lacked kosher food, he turned to Abbas, who led a successful emergency drive to get kosher food for Postville's Jews.
Before that, Abbas started an impromptu 7-day soup kitchen and food shelf in Postville's multicultural center next to his radio station to augment the existing 3-day-per-week community food shelf. The city objected to this use of the multicultural center and repeatedly tried to shut the Abbas soup kitchen/food shelf down. At the same time, the city made no attempt to pick up the the slack that this shutdown, if successful, would bring.
On Friday, November 21, state, county and city officials, along with volunteers like Abbas, met in Postville to try to coordinate relief efforts. Under pressure, the city agreed to use Turner Hall, an unoccupied city-owned landmark, as a relief center.
According to volunteers (and according to the sign posted on the building's entrance) the relief center was supposed to be open seven days a week, staffed by volunteers.
But, when volunteers showed up Saturday morning, they found the building locked tight. No one from the city came to open it or returned their calls. Hungry Agriprocessors workers were left on the streets to fend for themselves – a situation the city has seemed quite happy with these past few months.
Among Agriprocessors' dispossessed, Abbas has become the go-to person for all types of help. He has helped find dozens transportation home – whether that home is Indianapolis or Palau, the South Sea island where some of the newer Agriprocessors workers are from.
So when one of those dispossessed heard others talking about robbing stores and holding Rubashkin family members at gunpoint to get the money owed them, the worker made a beeline to Abbas.
Abbas smartly recorded the worker's story and then called the county sheriff (it was too early in the morning to call Postville's tiny police department, which was closed). After that, Abbas called the mayor and a prominent member of the Jewish community. He did not air the threat because he did not want to create panic.
Three hours after first informing law enforcement, Abbas decided the threat should be publicly available information, so he sent the audio to me. I published it immediately and urged the Jewish community to take precautions, including evacuating its private school.
Abbas's decision infuriated both Postville's city administration and the Jewish community – even though at the time I posted the audio reinforcements from the county sheriff had still not arrived in Postville (they were "on the way," a law enforcement source told me, and should be arriving "soon"; remember, this is three full hours after Abbas first called), and Postville's tiny police force did not have the capability on its own to handle the threat.
Iowa media picked up on the threat, the JTA later blogged about it, and the attention helped push through the coordinated relief effort mentioned above – the same relief effort the city is now undermining.
Meanwhile, we also recently learned that the undocumented Agriprocessors workers released from federal prison after serving five month sentences for aggravated identity theft are being supported entirely by St. Bridget's Catholic Church.
The workers have to remain in the country until they testify at Agriprocessors' and Sholom M. Rubashkin's trials, along with the trials of other indicted Agriprocessors managers. But they have no means of support. Their temporary work permits arrived weeks after their release and, in any case, jobs are very scarce in Postville these days.
But that scarcity of work does not apply to the Rubashkin family.
I asked Agriprocessors' trustee, Joseph Sarachek, if Rubashkin family members like Sholom M. Rubashkin's brother, Heshy (also an Agriprocessors VP) or Sholom M.'s son Getzel would be employed by the company if production restarts Monday or Tuesday.
"Yes," Sarachek said.
I asked him why.
"I need their experience," Sarachek replied.
Ditto for Chaim Abrahams, the Agriprocessors spokesman and would-be censor who Sarachek named point man for workers' questions.
"It's like triage," Sarachek said, "I have to work with what I've got."
What Sarachek has is far more than what most workers and unsecured creditors will ever see – real income from Agriprocessors.
Can meat produced through a modern form of indentured servitude be kosher?
Joseph Sarachek's grandfather, the late Rabbi Joseph Sarachek, was at one time the head of the NYC Board of Rabbis.
I wonder how Rabbi Sarachek would answer that question.
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turkeystone
Mr. Rosenberg,
Once again we owe you a word of thanks for putting the truth of the sorry Agriprocessors matter in front of us. The rabbi I'm most familiar with taught that "You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." I suspect that one day even the Rubashkins will know the truth of their arrogance, greed, and corruption. It won't be a pain-free experience, but it will set even them free. Until then, Shame on them... and Blessings to you. Thanks again.
Zachary Thacher
Thanks for keeping us informed. Incidentally, I live in NYC and am serving a huge dinner for 12 this Saturday. I checked out www.freshdirect.com to get a delivery of kosher beef, but since Rubashkin's is shut down Fresh Direct have no supplier. I hope they find a new source for beef that is as ethical as it is kosher. It's such a pity that both aspects are unrelated to each other.
Herbert Kaine
It is likely that Agriprocessors will close its doors for good, because there is no way it can recover from all the debt and fines levied against it. I guess this is good news, because there will be one less producer of kosher meatm and we all know that kashrut is more evil than female circumcision. Now that this is accomplished, do you have any concrete plans to help those put out of work by the closing of Agriprocessors? Are you working on a federal bailout on Postville? Your words on this forum are cheap, but they do nothing to aid those out of work, which is part of your accomplishment here.
Oh, Mazel tov on the events in Mumbai last week. 8 less Orthodox Jews to pollute the world with. You even get a bonus-the rebbetzin was 5 months pregnant
Ismail
Thanks, Shmarya, for your very informative pieces on Postville and Agriprocessors. On the behalf of all decent human beings, let me apologize for the disgraceful comments of Herbert Kaine, who tries to make ideological capital from the tragedy in Mumbai and maligns you in the process.
In an effort to remove from our collective mouth the bad taste left by the filthy Kaine, I will relate an amusing story which bears tangentially upon Agriprocessors.
Informed by the peerless obsessionals at Cook's Illustrated of the gustatory superiority of Aaron's Best poultry, I was delighted to find that my local Trader Joe's carried that Rubashkin brand. I stopped purchasing same once the problems at Postville became known.
Just before Thanksgiving, I noticed that Trader Joe's was offering kosher turkeys at a good price. The birds were marketed under the Trader Joe's name, though, and bore no further identification, so I asked the earnest young fellow at the customer service counter about the turkey's provenance, lest I unwittingly line the pockets of the latter-day robber barons of Postville. He said he wasn't sure which company TJ's bought the birds from but that he would find out for me.
A few minutes later, the lad returned, beaming. I must have missed the company's name on the packaging, he told me, but it was there, plain as day. The turkeys came from the Glatt company. Glatt Kosher, to be precise.
Gentiles. You gotta love us.
Herbert Kaine
Ismail. I am astounded that you find the events of last week in Mumbai tragic. After all, the victims were all kaffirs. Perhaps the tragedy includes the Taj and Oberoi hotels, but not the Chabad house. This is more likely the case. Why would Ismail be interested in kosher meat, since he knows full well that we add blood of Christians to all kosher food to make it more tasty. Isnt he afraid of contracting a blood borne disease? I dont need Ismail to make an apology for me. Instead, he should be apologizing for the events last week in Mumbai, which were perpetrated by people much closer to his creed than to mine
Ismail
"...which were perpetrated by people much closer to his creed than to mine"
My creed? You mean the perpetrators of the Mumbai savagery worshipped at the altar of Billie Holiday? Maybe there's a little good in everyone after all.
Note that this worthless dimwit apparently believes I am a Muslim and goes on to make the usual scurrilous implication of all Muslims with the acts of murderers. First, I'm not a Muslim (as Joe E. Brown famously remarked, nobody's perfect). Second, if I were, why should I apologize for the actions of some of my co-religionists? Does Kaine feel the need to apologize for the actions of Jewish criminals?
And Christian blood in all kosher food? Don't assume that all gentiles have a "goyische kopf" and fall for such silly, baseless slander.
Everyone knows it only goes into the matzoh.
Eve
This is a disgusting case. As a Midwesterner (lived in Iowa), it's not unique. Let's hope this will be "The Jungle" of the modern-day meatpacking industry.
nicejewishgrrl
Just another reason to gauge people for money. Not doing the yids any good. Agriprocessors is an example of what BS that the laws of kasrut are...because its more sanity, humane and more fit to eat, give me a f-ing break!
BTW Lobster is kosher in Maine
Justicemonger
Isn't Agriprocessors really being punished for our sins? After all, it's not as if Agriprocessors’ founder, Aaron Rubashkin, and his successors created the world's largest Kosher plant by putting a gun to our heads and forcing us to buy his product. Instead, Agriprocessors has lured customers with low prices. People expect their suppliers to drive the costs out of the supply chain. It's good for us and good for them.
Agriprocessors
may have perfected this technique, but you can find it almost everywhere these days. Corporations are in fierce competition to get
and keep customers, so they pass the bulk of their cost cuts through to
consumers as lower prices. Products are manufactured in China
at a fraction of the cost of making them here, and American consumers
get great deals. Back-office work, along with computer programming and
data crunching, is "offshored" to other nations, so our dollars go even
further.
Meanwhile,
many of us pressure companies to give us even better bargains. I look
on the Internet to find the lowest price I can and buy airline tickets, books, merchandise from just about anywhere with a click of a mouse. Don't you? The fact is, today's economy offers us a Faustian bargain: it can give consumers deals largely because it hammers workers and communities.
We
can blame big corporations, but we're mostly making this bargain with
ourselves. The easier it is for us to get great deals, the stronger the
downward pressure on wages and benefits. Last year, the real wages of
hourly workers, who make up about 80 percent of the work force,
actually dropped for the first time in more than a decade; hourly
workers' health and pension benefits are in free fall.
The easier it is for us to find better professional services, the
harder professionals have to hustle to attract and keep clients. The
more efficiently we can summon products from anywhere on the globe, the
more stress we put on our own communities.
But you and I
aren't just consumers. We're also workers and citizens. How do we strike the right balance? To claim that people shouldn't have access to
Agriprocessors or to cut-rate airfares or services from India
or to Internet shopping, because these somehow reduce their quality of
life, is paternalistic tripe. No one is a better judge of what people
want than they themselves.
The problem is, the choices we
make in the market don't fully reflect our values as workers or as
citizens. I didn't want our community bookstore in Cambridge, Mass., to close (as it did last fall) yet I still bought lots of books from Amazon.com.
In addition, we may not see the larger bargain when our own job or
community isn't directly at stake. I don't like what's happening to
airline workers, but I still try for the cheapest fare I can get.
The
only way for the workers or citizens in us to trump the consumers in us
is through laws and regulations that make our purchases a social choice
as well as a personal one. A requirement that companies with more than
50 employees offer their workers affordable health insurance,
for example, might increase slightly the price of their goods and
services. My inner consumer won't like that very much, but the worker
in me thinks it a fair price to pay. Same with an increase in the
minimum wage or a change in labor laws making it easier for employees to organize and negotiate better terms.
I
wouldn't go so far as to re-regulate the airline industry or hobble
free trade with China and India - that would cost me as a consumer far
too much - but I'd like the government to offer wage insurance to ease
the pain of sudden losses of pay. And I'd support labor standards that
make trade agreements a bit more fair.
These provisions
might end up costing me some money, but the citizen in me thinks they
are worth the price. You might think differently, but as a nation we
aren't even having this sort of discussion. Instead, our debates about
economic change take place between two warring camps: those who want
the best consumer deals, and those who want to preserve jobs and
communities much as they are. Instead of finding ways to soften the
blows, compensate the losers or slow the pace of change - so the consumers in us can enjoy lower prices and better products without
wreaking too much damage on us in our role as workers and citizens - we
go to battle.
I don't know if
Agriprocessors will remain in Postville. I do know that Iowans, like
most other Americans, want the great deals that can be had in a rapidly
globalizing high-tech economy. Yet the prices on sales tags don't
reflect the full prices we have to pay as workers and citizens. A
sensible public debate would focus on how to make that total price as
low as possible.
This article was originally written by Robert B. Reich and was about Wal-Mart. But by changing a few key phrases, it speak just as well about the situation at Agriprocessors.
Justicemonger
Shame on you Turkeystone. And shame on me. We're the purchasers of the goods that unethical companies produce. We're the ones who want, need, and demand cheap goods. We're the ones who enjoy (the high cost of) low prices. We're the ones who created companies like Agriprocessors and Wal-Mart. If you're looking for someone to blame look in the mirror - or look into my face. In Free Market Capitalism, the blame and shame lies upon our shoulders. A wise bear once said, "Only you can prevent forest fires." Well, the same could be said about this situation, "Only you can prevent unethical business practices."