Posted on 06/29/2008 5:00:15 AM PDT by shrinkermd
Scores of heavily armed federal agents last month stormed into Agriprocessors, which produces up to 70 percent of all kosher meat in America. The feds seized almost 400 of the plant's 900 workers in the largest single roundup of illegal immigrants to date, charging about 300 of them with identity theft and using stolen Social Security cards.
Some of those workers have since sued the company, alleging abuse, fraud and sexual coercion. Postville, which once sold T-shirts boasting of the peaceful coexistence of its many cultures, has been left "absolutely shattered," said the Rev. Paul Ouderkirk of the town's St. Bridget's Catholic Church.
The impact of the raid is spreading from northern Iowa to the Twin Cities, New York and beyond, provoking debate among American Jews about whether it's time to reassess how kosher food is produced.
"Our reputation is at stake," said Rabbi Morris Allen of Beth Jacob Congregation in Mendota Heights. "It was embarrassing for us to hear what was being done in order to process kosher food."
(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...
Real Americans have been saying the same thing about our politicians for years vis-a-vis the illegals that have invaded our country.
It IS embarrassing to see the disdain our "leaders" have for the average American who simply wants to secure the future of the United States for his progeny.
Why do WE (Americans) continually have to explain ourselves for simply wanting for our children what he have had?
I think that, by itself, calls into question the legitimacy of the kosher description.
Very disturbing.
“The Rubashkin family, widely credited with inventing the modern kosher processing plant, decided to cut costs by “bringing the butcher to the livestock,” and moved from New York to Iowa.”
They moved the livestock to the cheap labor. This is common among meat processors to move a plant that needs hundreds of employees to areas extremely unlikely to have enough people to fill all the new jobs, let along at the wages offered.
Like this one, slaughterhouses were once located in or near large cities where the most potential employees and customers were located. Who believes that the move to rural Iowa and other rural areas is anything but a plan to cut labor costs substantially, with the luring of illegal immigrants to the jobs as the unspoken key element to finding new and low cost employees?
Zero sympathy for this company. Why no arrests of company officials and owners? If they can’t operate legally, these companies should be allowed to fail and be replace by others who will operate within the law, and perhaps in areas with populations sufficient to supply the needed number of employees.
One constant in the immigration debate is that there is one side you should NEVER listen to: the Catholic Church, which has been whoring itself out to illegals from coast-to-coast.
Ping
The Des Moines Register published a long list of these that would turn your stomach.
This comment doesn’t sound good.
This Plant has had a shady past!
I have been familar with this plant for sometime as I am origaanally from a town in the same county. When they first started they hired locals. After all the poor working conditions they could hardly get enough people. Then they started hiring Iowa prison parolees. After exhausting that route they were hiring Russians out of New York who mostly were on probation. Then they started hiring illegal immigrants. Why can’t they hire any of their own? After all they are making a product for themselves.
posted by tooner on Jun. 29, 08 at 7:29 AM |
They moved the cheap labor to the raw materials. The days of railroads moving live stock to the cities ended a long time ago, though dedicated swinging meat trains running to Chicago from places like Waterloo lasted a bit longer. While cities became union bastions where the cost of production rose, urban social utopians and Upton Sinclair-ophiles also decided that they didn't want dirty, smelly stockyards and packing houses in their own back yard anymore... so we lesser drones out in flyover country ended up with the industry. A perfect storm. When us "hicks" sandwiched between the coasts eventually couldn't - or wouldn't - do the work cheaply enough (note the pattern), the industry brought in outsiders and cut the union jobs off at the knees.
What we out here are left with is not pretty, yet the do-gooders seem to think that the cure is more of the same. You want malaise? Come to Iowa; we won't even roll out of our own vomit.
Mr. niteowl77
If I only could violate any law I needed in order to succeed at business I could make all kinds of money. If they must violate the law then they have right to be in business and have failed.
“They moved the cheap labor to the raw materials.”
The first move of these plants from the cities to less populated areas moved the work from union labor to cheaper rural, citizen labor, I guess. Then the even cheaper illegal immigrant labor was lured in to take many of the jobs once done by citizens.
But the story does say this particular plant was moved from New York to Iowa, apparently in 1987. Doesn’t say where in NY the plant was located, but you can be sure that the products are largely shipped back to NYC and other cites where most of the customers for kosher meat still live.
The textile industry followed a similar pattern, from northern cities to the South, then those jobs were finally moved out of the country to cheap foreign labor.
The "slavery" in question is by CHOICE. No one forced them to take the jobs.
Everyone else, including the FIL, got to go along for the ride.
Mr. niteowl77
What years do you think the decent pay for locals began to deteriorate?
Still, from some of the stories that have been in newspapers on this subject recently, it seems new plants or major expansions of these plants are still being made in areas without the necessary local population to supply them with employees. Do you think that’s the case?
“The “slavery” in question is by CHOICE. No one forced them to take the jobs.”
Desperate people will do a lot to marginally improve their economic status. Not sure that excuses US employers for taking advantage of that reality to lower their payroll cost, not to mention breaking several laws in the process.
There are some who put themselves in de facto indentured servitude status to get into the US. Perhaps since it’s done voluntarily, you think it should be made legal?
THis is truly a black eye for the jewish community and this isnt helping us either. Agri produces about 70% of americas kosher meat and with this happening, jews in small towns like mine have a very difficult time getting kosher meat, and will ultimately drive the cost up as well. I have been following this over at a blog http://failedmessiah.typepad.com/ if anyone is interested.
IBP had a plant in the midwest that hired homeless people “recruited” in big cities. When after a few days the homeless remembered that they were work averse they quit and wandered the streets of this small town. Soon there was quite a population of these homeless wandering about. It was a disaster for the town.
You would think with rabbis on-site performing the religious rites, someone would have raised a red flag.
When industries at the lower end of the pay scales have sizable plants in smaller towns, there are many ways it can prove to be more a liability than an asset. Hasn’t always been true, but it certainly seems to be now.
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