Printer Friendly

Email to A Friend

Friday July 11, 2008

Free of boycott, Agriprocessors fights back

by ben harris
jta

An Orthodox social justice group dropped its boycott of the embattled kosher meat producer Agriprocessors, saying the company is “beginning to take significant steps” to address claims of worker mistreatment at its plant in Postville, Iowa.

Uri L’tzedek launched the action in mid-June to protest reports that Agriprocessors had employed underage workers, tolerated an atmosphere of sexual harassment and paid workers below the minimum wage.

In calling off the boycott, the New York-based group said it was encouraged by reforms instituted by a former federal prosecutor hired recently as the company’s compliance officer.

The move by Uri L’tzedek represents the first bit of good news in a while for Agriprocessors, which has been reeling since federal authorities carried out the largest workplace immigration raid in American history in Postville on May 12.

More than one-third of the company’s workforce was detained in the raid, including 18 juveniles. About 300 employees have pleaded guilty to various forms of identity fraud and are facing deportation.

Since the raid, workers have unleashed a flood of allegations against their former employer, saying they were mistreated, sexually harassed and made to work lengthy overnight shifts. The raid also severely impaired the company’s production capacity, sparking fears of a kosher meat shortage in the United States.

In response, Agriprocessors announced it would replace Sholom Rubashkin — the son of the company’s founder and owner — as head of the Postville plant and hired James Martin, the former federal prosecutor, as its compliance officer.

According to a letter from Uri L’tzedek, Martin’s reforms include an anonymous tip line for employees, a safety department and new safety training initiatives.

The Uri L’tzedek announcement came just days after the arrest of two plant supervisors on charges of aiding and abetting the use of fraudulent identification. Juan Carlos Guerrero Espinoza and Martin de la Rosa Loera are the first supervisory workers to be charged.

A warrant was issued for another supervisor, Hosam Amara, a 43-year-old said to be of Palestinian origin who was rumored to have fled Postville the week after the raid.

To date, no charges have been brought against Agriprocessors’ owner Aaron Rubashkin, a Chabad-Lubavitcher from Brooklyn, or any other members of the company’s upper management.

But Nathan Lewin, an attorney representing the company, is accusing the U.S. government of “selective prosecution” in its targeting of the company.

“The government should be asked why it picked on Agri, a relatively small meat-packing plant, to make its point about illegal immigrants working at such plants,” Lewin wrote in a statement to JTA. “This is a great injustice in light of the fact that Agri has made a major contribution to Jewish religious life in the U.S. by providing high-quality packaged kosher meats now available in supermarkets across the country.”

In an attempt to polish its image, Agriprocessors has hired the high-profile public relations firm 5WPR, and last week ran advertisements in major Jewish newspapers. The paid ad appears in this week’s j.

The ad states that “Agriprocessors was never faced with a government imposed recall” for food contamination. But according to a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, there is no such thing as a government-imposed recall. All recalls are voluntary; Agriprocessors had two last year.

In July 2007, the company recalled about 35,000 pounds of frozen beef and chicken products because the label failed to indicate the foods might contain a known allergen. In January that year, the company recalled about 2,700 pounds of hot dogs due to possible underprocessing.

Earlier this month Jewish leaders used the Agriprocessors case to demand federal immigration form.

“The immigration raid in Postville underscores why the United States needs comprehensive immigration reform, an important priority of the American Jewish community,” Gideon Aronoff, the president of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, said during a national conference call. “Absent real reform, raids, detention and deportation are the only tools left to address immigrants.”

Did you find this article interesting? Subscribe to our FREE newsletter and you'll be notified each week when "J." goes online. We'll tell you about the most important stories of the week and give you a link to each one.

This page contains a BETA version of Amazon contextual links. They are marked by the dashed underline.  Your purchases support our site. At times they point to items which are not related to the actual link. Please alert us by email if you discover objectionable links.