Posted on 11/24/2008 8:29:31 AM PST by george76
I don’t feel sorry for them, and the owners should be in jail.
People in that part of the midwest typically drive 20 miles one way to grocery shop. They drive even farther for available jobs. The problem is the company would rather punish the town and create pressure to legalize illegal aliens than actually solve the problem by hiring from the local legal labor pool.
With only a population of 2,200, I would say no.........Sounds to me like the place employs the whole town.
If you were the avg libsheep, getting paid, say, 1200 a month for doing nothing (some gov't dole) or had to work in a meat processing plant for 2000 a month take home...
Agree. If immigration laws were enforced and all employers played by the rules, labor costs would rise, but so would prices the meat processors could charge for their product, as the competition would not be undercuttng them with illegal labor. Demand would also increase, as American workers would have more purchasing power, and all the wealth being sent abroad by illegals would remain in our economy.
If a product or service cannot be delivered with legal labor, and still turn a profit, then there is insufficient demand for that product or service, and some or all providers of it should go out of business, and production decreased or stopped entirely. If a product or service is REALLY needed, there will be demand for it, at a price that turns a profit.
Cheaters, like those who hire illegal labor, screw up the workings of the market, and create a situtation where it is difficult or impossible for law abiding companies to make a profit.
The government’s primary role in the economy should be ensuring that everyone plays by the rules. The market will take care of nearly all the rest.
the minimum wage does kill jobs
The problems with Agriprocessors and its owners went way beyond employing illegals. This was an organized crime operation from day one, and the town should never have tolerated it. Now the town’s original residents are reaping what they sowed.
The owner is in jail.
The government shut them down. There are criminal charges being brought against the company. Sorry, NO “attempt could have been made”.
Hey, hey, now. Easy with the slurs.
In a time of increasing economic desperation, I’ll bet they could have found plenty of citizens to work for the same salary as these illegals. Of course then you’d have to pay social security taxes and medicare taxes and all that stuff, which they may have been avoiding.
If the owner is in jail, that may explain it. But it’s hardly the fault of the feds for enforcing the law.
What kind of sense does it make to keep paying millions of Mexican illegals, who will send much of the money out of the country, when unemployment is skyrocketing and millions of Americans who would spend the money here are out of jobs?
Sure, the adjustment will be painful, but the blame belongs on all of those—employers, local law enforcement, and ICE, who looked the other way while this mess got built up. Also, of course, the Alinskiites like ACORN who helped build this mess in order to overload and bring down the welfare system.
If the government shut down the plant and threw the owner in jail, then that’s tough on the town, all right.
But if they had done more of this sort of thing earlier, then we wouldn’t have the massive problems we are stuck with now.
Hopefully other business owners will consider replacing some of their illegals with Americans, when they see what happened to this company.
“I think the packing plant owners are trying to issue a PAYBACK for the affront of making them follow the law.”
See 21, and 30, and get a clue.
lol, what universe are you from?
In 1987, the NY Rubashkin family bought the old plant and turned it into a kosher beef and chicken meat-packing plant. They were literally given the keys to the city, tax exemptions, subsidies, etc. The locals were thrilled, 400+ were gradually employed.
About 1990, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) showed up and began organizing to collectively bargain for unionization.
The locals are not sympathetic to unions but some employees were disgruntled with the Rubashkins and also wanted more pay. So the Rubashkins began to import illegal Guatemalan families, who spoke no English, to replace the locals, especially the union-leaners.
There were no illegals in NE IA prior so the Guatemalans so they were an isolated group, unavailable to the unions or to the labor inspectors. Documents were forged, wholesale, with the knowledge of the Rubashkins, that included making many of the illegals older on paper, so the whole family could work.
The Rubashkins made them work 12 hour shifts without overtime, minimum wage, minimal benefits. They turned it into a sweat-shop nearly full of illegals.
Now the Rubashkins are busted, closed the plant and filed bankruptcy.
I believe the Rubashkins planned this from the beginning and that every decision was based on greed and indifferance to the law. They thought they could come to hayseed Iowa where they would get the red-carpet treatment, avoid the unions that run NY, avoid immigration authorities who have vitually no presence in Iowa as there are minimal illegals, pay minimum wage, and work people like slaves.
I am not a union supporter, but this is the kind of worker abuse that government won't stop without them.
From CBS News:
"They don't understand the poverty that we know in Guatemala," Rucal says. "I never hurt anyone here all I want to do is work." She says she paid $14,000 to smuggle her 14-year-old son and 15-year-old daughter to the U.S. they say, even though they're minors, they worked at the plant along with their mother to pay down the debt. Now they may testify in a criminal case against the company.
Check out this link if you want to see what news sources are saying about the Rubashkins:
http://failedmessiah.typepad.com/failed_messiahcom/kosher_meat_scandal/index.html
And this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moshe_Rubashkin
The Rubashkin family has a history of bank fraud, pocketing union dues, illegal storage of hazardous waste, lying to authorities. Their Montex Mill, burnt down by arson 3 days before it was to be sold at a sheriff's auction for unpaid taxes.
Now they are claiming they are victims of a pogrom against them.
Thanks for all your information. Just when you think it couldn’t get any worse...
Interesting turn of events....
This is a real part of American history.
The reason fir the town apparently no longer exists. If not viable, it will disappear. It has happened lots of times,even in big cities.
DEEtroit is headed that way now as well. There will be suburbs with a big hole in the middle
They got fluffed by crooks and will go back to their roots, farming.
We complain so often on FR about Muslim clerics not condemning jihadists, but where are the Rabbis who should be unified in shunning and condemning these crooks?
Instead, the Rubashkins paid for Rabbis to come out to Iowa and glorify their efforts. Shame on Jewish leadership for not speaking out and criticizing the Rubashkins for hiding behind the good name of the Jews.
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