The Forward’s Nathaniel Popper, who broke the story of alleged worker mistreatment at the Agriprocessors plant in Iowa in 2006, followed up today with an important story about a unionization struggle at the company’s Brooklyn warehouse.

Aside from reports of additional alleged company shenanigans, the story notes that Agri challenged a vote in favor of unionization by arguing that the workers were — wait for it — undocumented illegal immigrants, and therefore their votes shouldn’t count. Lawyers for Agri are now petitioning the Supreme Court to invalidate the vote, the story says.

Popper writes:

The situation at the Brooklyn plant also answers questions that have gone unanswered in Iowa. Most notably, it is unclear if the company knowingly employed undocumented workers, such as those who were arrested during the raid in Iowa. The company has pleaded ignorance. But the Brooklyn case suggests that long before the raid in Iowa, the company knew it had undocumented workers in its ranks and knew how to find them — when it was to the company’s benefit.

Rabbi Dovid Eliezrie, a Chabad rabbi from California and one of the rabbis who visited Agriprocessors’ Postville plant last month, had a piece in yesterday’s Jerusalem Post about his visit. As several people have pointed out, the piece resembles another op-ed on the subject that appeared in the St. Louis Jewish Light.

A point by point critique of Eliezrie’s op-ed is available at FailedMessiah.

It took more than a week, but the Times today printed six responses to last week’s op-ed by Shmuel Herzfeld criticizing the responses of the major Orthodox groups and calling for a rabbinic investigation of the kosher producer Agriprocessors. Not surprisingly, opinion roughly divides between the rabbis and everyone else.

The Orthodox Union and the Rabbinical Council of America both took strong exception to Herzfeld, restating their position that, yes, they do care about worker treatment etc., but the federal government is the only entity qualified to evaluate and enforce those standards. Also, the company is entitled to due process and a presumption of innocence.

The letters can be read in full here.

Also, we got some emails regarding my description yesterday of Shmuel Herzfeld as Nat Lewin’s “rabbi.” Though Lewin is a member of Herzfeld’s Washington shul, as well as several other area congregations, Lewin is a regular attendee of an Orthodox synagogue in Potomac, Md., where he lives. Calling Herzfeld his “rabbi” is inaccurate. Sorry about that.

Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld (he of NYTimes Op-Ed fame) and his congregant Nat Lewin (famed attorney and Agriprocessors defender) are having a little intra-shul spat over the ethics of kosher slaughter. Lewin called Herzfeld a “vigilante” in his response to Herzfeld’s Times article and described his reasoning there as “fallacious.”

Now Herzfeld is back for another round, though with the stipulation that he won’t “engage in a back and forth.” Oh, well maybe just one more time.

Herzfeld’s response after the jump.

CORRECTION: This post originally referred to Herzfeld as Lewin’s “rabbi.” Though Lewin is a member of Herzfeld’s shul, he regularly attends a different congregation near his Potomac, Md. home.

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Nat Lewin, the Washington attorney representing Agriprocessors, just sent us a response to Shmuel Herfzeld’s New York Times op-ed last week.

Read the response after the jump.

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Lots of new developments out of Postville over the weekend, most notably the release by the American Civil Liberties Union of a script used by judges and attorneys in the “fast-tracked” legal proceedings that followed the May 12 raid at Agriprocessors.

I saw these scripts in use at the Waterloo fairgrounds and they didn’t seem particularly sinister at the time. But now it seems the scripts amounted to an entire blueprint for how the prosecutions should unfold and suggest to some experts that they were prepared in overly close cooperation between federal judges and the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Prosecutors say the scripts were not binding and were meant to help swamped defense counsel. But some legal experts say the documents suggest the court had endorsed the plea agreements in advance, before a single immigrant had appeared in court, prompting at least one defense attorney presented with the script to walk out “in disgust.”

The script is likely to provide ammunition to skeptics in Congress investigating the possible denial of constitutional protections to the illegal immigrants arrested in Postville.

You can download the documents here. The New York Times report on the documents is here.

The Des Moines Register continues its probing coverage of the raid with a story on the child labor allegations investigated by the Iowa Labor Commissioner’s Office. The report covers a lot of familiar territory — many interviews have been published with accounts by former child laborers, including one interview by yours truly — but none get at the essential question of the company’s culpability.

Agri says the kids provided fake IDs and that they terminated employees who were found to have lied about their ages. The kids say their ages were never questioned, which isn’t surprising considering that the documentation they provided — fake or not — includes date of birth. If the company didn’t challenge the legality of the documents themselves, even though a large majority of its workers were apparently illegal immigrants, why would they have specifically checked ages? This is what the state attorney general will have to sort out.

In other news, the Orthodox Union’s Menachem Genack was interviewed on NPR alongside Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld, who wrote an Op-Ed last week in The New York Times calling for a serious rabbinic investigation of Agriprocessors. Genack repeats the OU’s longstanding position on Agri — that it’s up to the government to determine if workers are being treated properly — and takes credit for forcing out Sholom Rubashkin as plant manager and getting a compliance officer hired. Not a lot that’s new here, but still an interesting exchange. Listen here.

Finally, my colleague, Fundermentalist Jacob Berkman, reports from the CAJE conference in Burlington, Vt., that Agri meat was ordered off the menu. We’ll have more on that shortly.

UPDATE: The Fundermentalist reports: Using meat from a plant that may not be up to ethical par “was just not in the spirit of CAJE,” the organization’s executive director, Jeffrey Lasday told me Sunday afternoon. He said he made the decision not to use Agri shortly after the plant was raided in a large-scale immigration bust in May.

It seemed for a while things might have quieted on the Postville front, but the past few days have brought a flood of new information. Let’s briefly recap:

• Yesterday the Iowa labor commissioner referred 57 allegations of child labor violations to the state attorney general, calling the violations “egregious” and recommending they be prosecuted “to the fullest extent of the law.”
• This news follows by one day the declaration by a group of 25 Orthodox rabbis that the plant was clean and modern and entirely different from the “jungle” described by New York Times editorialists.
• Shmuel Herzfeld, an Orthodox rabbi in Washington, penned an op-ed in today’s Times saying the responses of the Orthodox Union and the Rabbinical Council of America have “fallen far short.”

Agriprocessors spokesman Menachem Lubinsky also provided JTA with a number of documents last night that provide an interesting window into the way the labor commissioner’s investigation unfolded.

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The National Council of Young Israel organized a company-sponsored visit for 25 Orthodox rabbis to Postville, Iowa, last week. Here is video shot by the Five Towns Jewish Times inside the plant.

WARNING to vegetarians and those of weak stomach (myself included): Video includes graphic footage from the kill floor.

UPDATE: Also today, the Iowa Labor Commissioner announced it had completed a months-long child labor investigation and is turning the results over to the attorney general for prosecution, citing “egregious” violations of state labor law.

Agriprocessors responded by saying it was “at a loss” to understand the commissioner’s action, claiming the government refused its request to identify child laborers so they could be fired.

The labor commissioner’s press release is here. The full Agriprocessors statement is after the jump.

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The New York Times weighed in with its latest editorial on the fallout from the May 12 immigration raid at Agriprocessors, the largest kosher meatpacking plant in the U.S. (See previous editorial here).

Most of the newspaper’s ire was reserved for the federal government, whose criminalization of the illegal workers it called “a disgrace,” “a fraudulent exercise,” and “cruel” — echoing many of the descriptors used last week in hearings on the subject in Washington.

But the paper also rehearsed the litany of complaints against the company itself, in part to account for its outrage at the government’s targeting of the workers rather than the employers who hired them:

A slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, develops an ugly reputation for abusing animals and workers. Reports of dirty, dangerous conditions at the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant accumulate for years, told by workers, union organizers, immigrant advocates and government investigators. A videotape by an animal-rights group shows workers pulling the windpipes out of living cows. A woman with a deformed hand tells a reporter of cutting meat for 12 hours a day, six days a week, for wages that labor experts call the lowest in the industry. This year, federal investigators amass evidence of rampant illegal hiring at the plant, which has been called “a kosher ‘Jungle.’ ”

The conditions at the Agriprocessors plant cry out for the cautious and deliberative application of justice.

Two days after immigrants and their advocates marched in Postville, Agriprocessors released this statement:

The founders of Agriprocessors, the Rubashkin family, are a Jewish refugee family that escaped the clutches of Communism decades ago. Aron and Rivka Rubashkin fled Soviet Russia after experiencing oppression in the anti religious regime. Mrs. Rubashkin’s uncles were imprisoned in Siberia due to their religious beliefs. Mr. Rubashkin noted: “As immigrants in America we found freedom and opportunity. We fully understand the pain and suffering which immigrants are going through in building better lives.”

Agriprocessors is dedicated to providing economic prosperity, quality jobs and a safe environment for all its employees. Chaim Abrahams, a company spokesman, explained: “We are committed to follow all federal, state and local regulations in our plant.” In reiterating the company policy, Mr. Rubashkin pointed to the hiring of Jim Martin, a former US Attorney in the state of Missouri, as the chief compliance officer of Agriprocessors. “ He is insuring that our company excels in the area of compliance to government regulation” noted Abrahams. Among other things, Mr. Martin established a 24-hour anonymous hotline for any complaints of workers.

Since the plant opened in 1988, it has created a new era of prosperity in the region. The plant has created jobs, and given a boost to the area. Our plant is modern, clean, and consistently focused on food safety and the safety of our workers.

Agriprocessors is deeply concerned about the plight of the immigrant families in Postville. The Rubashkin family feels that it can help others. Aron Rubashkin explained “As an immigrant family we want to provide our workers with the opportunity to share in the American dream. In recent weeks we have been helping the local families with their daily needs”.