JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

Portman references Agriprocessors raid in Oscar presentation

By Daniel Sieradski · February 23, 2009

For those who missed last night’s Academy Awards, one of the highlights of the evening came when Jewish actors Natalie Portman and Ben Stiller took the stage to present the award for cinematography. 

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Iowa A.G. files child labor charges against Agriprocessors

By Ami Eden · September 9, 2008

News brief below.

Links to the AG’s criminal complaint and affidavit here.

(JTA) – Following the filing of criminal charges against owners of the kosher meat producer Agriprocessors, the Orthodox Union says it will withdraw its kosher certification of the company within two weeks unelss new management is hired.

“Within the coming days, or lets say a week or two, we will suspend our supervision unless there’s new management in place,” said Rabbi Menachem Genack, the O.U.’s head of kosher supervision.

Genack’s comments came just hours after Iowa’s attorney general filed criminal charges against Agriprocessors and its owner, Aaron Rubashkin, for child-labor violations.

On Tuesday, the attorney general’s office charged Rubashkin, his son Sholom, and three human resources employees with more than 9,000 violations of Iowa’s Child Labor law, according to a statement from the attorney general’s office.

Former workers had alleged child labor violations at Agriprocessors almost immediately after a massive immigration raid at the plant in Postville, Iowa, the country’s largest kosher meatpacking plant. The company has denied having knowingly hired underage workers.

“All of the named individual defendants possessed shared knowledge that Agriprocessors employed undocumented aliens,” said the affidavit filed Tuesday in Allamakee County District Court. “It was likewise shared knowledge among the defendants that many of those workers were minors. The company’s hiring practices encouraged job applicants to submit identification documents which were forgeries, and known to contain false information as to resident alien status, age and identity.”

The alleged violations, which date back to September 2007, are each punishable by up to 30 days in jail and a fine of between $65 and $625, the attorney general’s office said. An initial court appearance is scheduled for Sept. 17.

Agriprocessors has been under the gun since a raid on May 12 resulted in the arrest of nearly 400 employees on illegal immigration charges. Following the raid, employees alleged they were shorted on pay, forced to work long hours and were the targets of sustained sexual harassment.

In May, the company announced that the Postville plant’s manager, Sholom Rubashkin, would be replaced. Months later, Rubashkin is still a regular presence at the plant and no replacement has been named.

The attorney general’s complaint represents the first criminal charges to be brought against the company’s owner and senior management.

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Agri fends off Obama, Iowa governor

By Ben Harris · August 26, 2008

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama jumped into the fray over Agriprocessors yesterday by slamming the company for hiring underage workers (more on that here). Coming on the eve of the DNC convention in Denver, the comment predictably got a lot of attention. But it followed a far lengthier and more damning appraisal of the company by Iowa governor and fellow Democrat Chet Culver.

Writing Sunday in the Des Moines Register, Culver assailed the company for taking advantage of a failed immigration policy and of “taking the low road” in its business practices. He reviews the history of troubles the company has run into with government regulators and pats himself on the back for the steps his administration has taken in response to the latest allegations. Finally, he tops it off with what is fast becoming standard practice when criticizing Agriprocessors – referencing Upton Sinclair’s landmark expose of the meatpacking industry in the novel “The Jungle.”

Agri responded Tuesday with a comprehensive refutation of the governor and an invitation to tour the plant (apparently, everyone gets one of these now except for me).

Full statement after the jump.

AGRI RESPONDS TO THE GOVERNOR

Gov. Chet Culver in his Sunday op-ed essay urged Agriprocessors to “take the high road” and join the family of responsible businesses in Iowa. We believe that we are indeed on course to take the “high road.”

Agriprocessors moved to Iowa two decades ago precisely because the company had a vision: to create a source of kosher meat that could supply the nation’s growing demand for kosher foods with healthy, good-quality and reasonably priced meat. Agriprocessors chose to locate its plant in Iowa because of what the state had and continues to offer. Iowa offers honest, hard-working people - people who work for our company and people who supply the company with products and services.

With the grace of God, Agriprocessors flourished in the state of Iowa while benefiting the citizens of Iowa. It provided jobs to many hundreds of people and stimulated economic growth not only in Postville but throughout the state. Agriprocessors is very much a part of Iowa’s dream, creating a value-added product from the great beef in Iowa for export nationwide.

Agriprocessors fully subscribes to the governor’s call to begin to take the high road and join the family of responsible businesses in Iowa since it wholeheartedly believes that it is doing precisely that. In just the past few months, it has taken a number of important steps that certainly fulfill that challenge.

While the governor’s first bill in office was to raise the minimum wage from $6.25 per hour to $7.25 an hour, Agriprocessors has raised its minimum starting wage from $7.25 per hour to $10 per hour (for workers with skills). The company has also instituted affordable and quality health care for all of its workers, another prime concern of the governor.

Agriprocessors regrets that some of its employees may have used fraudulent documents to lie about their age. Agriprocessors has been in contact with the Iowa Department of Labor ever since it raised the issue early this year. It repeatedly asked the department to advise it of underage workers who may have fraudulently presented documents to work at the plant. The department did its own audit in April and did not find any underage workers. The company policy is clear: “No one under 18 may be employed at the plant.” When it did learn of several underage workers in the plant, they were immediately dismissed.

Agriprocessors hired Jim Martin, a former U.S. attorney in Missouri, as its new compliance officer to ensure that the company is in complete compliance with all federal and state regulations. It has implemented safety training sessions for all of its supervisors and for all of its workers. The company means it: Safety is its No. 1 concern. Everyone at Agriprocessors knows that, its officers, employees on the line and supervisors.

Agriprocessors hired a former Occupational Safety and Health Administration official to monitor its compliance with all federal and state safety requirements. Agriprocessors is a modern and safe place to work, as anyone who has visited the plant recently can plainly see. It has also hired an experienced staffing company to do its hiring, and it is voluntarily using the new federal e-Verify system.

The water-treatment problem that the governor raises was a problem years ago not only for the company’s plant but also for another business as well. While the other company cut and ran, Agriprocessors stayed the course and invested heavily in a high-technology water-treatment plant that is a model of environmental friendliness and is the envy of companies across the country and, indeed, throughout the world. Ironically, Agriprocessors never received any credit for this bold action.

We are pleased to invite the governor to visit the plant, to meet with our leadership and to see the truth firsthand. In such a meeting, we would be delighted to hear the governor’s suggestions as to how we can further improve to fulfill the governor’s challenge to us. In addition to meeting with us, the governor should meet with members of our community, the mayor of Postville, with our happy employees and our supervisors and our compliance officers.

In the end, we are certain that the governor will see firsthand that our plant is anything but a “jungle,” and, when all of the bitterness of the last few months is taken out of the equation, that we are indeed on course to being on an even “higher road.”

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Postville kosher supervisor denies report of walkout

By Ben Harris · August 21, 2008

The top kosher supervisor at the Agriprocessors plant in Postville, Rabbi Menachem Weissmandl, is denying reports that some of his rabbis staged a walkout yesterday in frustration over reduced pay. The Jewish Star reports that Weissmandl “denied emphatically” that the rabbis “staged any sort of job action Wednesday.”

Weissmandl admits, however, the essential details of what was reported – there have been delays in payments to the supervisors, work shifts (and thus total income) for the rabbis have been reduced, a complaint was made to management about it yesterday, and production was interrupted as a result. Weissmandl says what took place was an impromptu “conversation” that the rabbis engaged in when they spotted Heshy Rubashkin on the production floor. He said the conversation should have happened after hours and called it “shlemazeldik” – not sure exactly what that means, but shlemazel is Yiddish for “unlucky person.”

In general, a fee for kosher supervision is paid to a certifying agency who then hires the rabbis who provide the supervision – in this case Agriprocessors pays Weissmandl who then hires the supervisors, who are technically considered his employees. The Star reports that the company has met its financial obligations to Weissmandl in a “timely” manner. He would not say, though, whether it is he or Agriprocessors that directly pays the kosher supervisors.

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Agriprocessors walkout

By Ben Harris · August 20, 2008

News out of Postville today was that kosher supervisors at Agriprocessors, upset by fewer shifts and reduced pay, had staged a walkout. Though we were unable to get in touch with any supervisors, the company has more or less confirmed the essential details of the story. Our brief on the subject is here.

What’s clear from this episode is that more than three months after the massive federal immigration raid on May 12, Agriprocessors is still well below its previous production levels, so much so that there isn’t enough work for the supervisors. What’s less clear is whether the company is having such significant cash flow problems that it is behind in payments to the supervisors. This isn’t entirely implausible, given that the company is not only facing much decreased revenues but also increased labor and legal costs. Agri has had to up its hourly wage to attract new workers and the staffing companies they have hired are surely taking a nice cut as well.

Here’s company spokesman Menachem Lubinsky’s explanation of what went down today:

It is no secret that Agriprocessors was forced to cut back production of meat and poultry after more than 1/3 of its labor force was seized in a May 12th raid by ICE. While the company has made big strides in hiring new workers and restoring production, it is still significantly behind May 12th levels. For the kosher slaughterers (shochtim) and rabbis, this has meant not being able to work multiple shifts and a 6-day work week, cutting into their ability to make more money, while also making do with the company’s policy of a lag time in their paychecks. This morning, the rabbis staged a brief 30 minute walk-out to air their grievances. After quick negotiations with Heshy Rubashkin and Rabbi Weissmandl [the chief supervising rabbi], they were satisfied with management’s response and returned to work. The rabbis are, of course, hoping for a resumption of pre-May 12th production, which would again offer them the opportunities they had before. Agriprocessors is committed to make every effort to restore full production so that the rabbis can again enjoy the working conditions that attracted them to Postville in the first place.

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Agri troubles in Brooklyn, too

By Ben Harris · August 15, 2008

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.

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Eliezrie on Agri

By Ben Harris · August 14, 2008

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.

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Agri saga continues in the Times

By Ben Harris · August 13, 2008

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.

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Herzfeld v. Lewin, Round 2

By Ben Harris · August 12, 2008

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.

Response to Nat Lewin
by Shmuel Herzfeld

Nat Lewin is one of our finest congregants and has always been a terrific advocate for the Jewish people. Obviously, our entire community is struggling with this difficult issue which asks us to balance the requirement of due process while not turning our backs on heart wrenching allegations that strike at the core of our identity.

I will not engage in a back and forth argument in this forum, but it is important to address the argument about the legitimacy of the position cited in the name of Rabbi Yisrael Salanter.

Many sources on this topic are cited in an article by Rabbi Avi Gisser, Chief Rabbi of Ofra, Israel in his article for Ma’aglei Tzedek, an organization in Israel that seeks to unite laws of kashrut with concerns for how workers are treated. The article is available on line at http://www.edah.org/mtzenglish.pdf.

The story about Rav Salanter was one story from a genre of Rav Salanter stories that might have been cited. Here is a small portion of Rav Gisser’s article:

According to Rav Kook, what our generation needs, especially now, is to add fuel to the great flame of social justice that stems from a deep awe of G-d. Three anecdotes from the life of Rabbi Salanter demonstrate this. Once, Rabbi Salanter visited a new matzah bakery in order to check its work practices and level of kashrut. He reviewed all the manufacturing procedures extensively and observed the intense labor and toil of the employees. At the end of Rabbi Salanter’s visit, the bakery owner proudly asked him, “What does the rabbi say?” He answered, “The Gentiles accuse us, G-d forbid, of using the blood of Christian children in matzah. While this is not the case, from what I have seen here, there is indeed a violation of the prohibition on blood in food. The blood of the workers is mixed with the matzah! I will not certify this bakery as kosher.” In another case, Rabbi Salanter was asked what demands particular attention when baking matzah. He answered: “One must be scrupulous not to yell at the woman kneading the dough.” He was also quoted as saying, “It is prohibited to enhance your mitzvot at the expense of others.” One day Rabbi Salanter was hosted by a rich man. When he performed the ritual hand-washing before the meal, he used a sparing amount of water. He was asked, “Doesn’t the Torah say it is praiseworthy to wash with a lot of water?” He answered,

“I can only do that in my own home. Here, however, I must consider the needs of the servant who must carry the buckets of water.” When attending large dinners, Rabbi Salanter also hurried to finish eating quickly in consideration of the waiters and other workers, who had to wait until the end of the meal to go home.  “Justice, justice you shall pursue in order that you may live in and inherit the land.”

Rav Gisser’s article is published with a powerful statement immediately following it.  Here is a portion of that statement:

Out of concern for Israel’s moral and humane character as a Jewish State, respecting all its citizens, in which justice is one of its basic principles, we wish to announce a social seal, committing all who believe in justice and morality. We hereby request all business proprietors to respect the dignity of their workers and visitors, both regarding to conditions of employment, and also assuring accessibility to people with disabilites. We ask all for whom the Jewish humane character of Israel is important to be aware of just consumerism, and to buy only in places holding the social seal.

It is signed by many of our greatest rabbis including, Rabbi Ya’akov Ariel, Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, Rabbi Yo’el Bin-Nun, Rabbi Chaim Drukman Rabbi Mordechay Elon, Rabbi Benni Lau and Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein.

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Lewin: Herzfeld assertions are fallacious

By Ben Harris · August 11, 2008

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.

REPLY TO RABBI SHMUEL HERZFELD

by Nathan Lewin

In a front-page article asserting that minors had been hired to work in an Iowa kosher meat-packing plant and in an editorial calling the plant the modern equivalent of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” the New York Times joined the media frenzy that has, over the past two months, with very little basis in fact, pilloried AgriProcessors, the country’s leading kosher slaughterer and packer of beef, and driven federal and local law-enforcement personnel to threaten dire consequences to its owner and employees. Insult was heaped on injury when an Orthodox rabbi in Washington, D.C., joined the vigilantes and published an Op-Ed piece in the Times of August 6, claiming that the news accounts “call into question whether the food processed in the plant qualifies as kosher.”

This nationally published challenge to the kashruth of the AgriProcessor product contradicts the unanimous opinion of highly respected and universally recognized kashruth-certifying agencies that have repeatedly endorsed – even while the media attack was ongoing – the ritual acceptability of AgriProcessors’ product. Nonetheless, Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld of Ohev Sholom Synagogue in Washington (where the author of this response has been a member for the past 40 years) – a young rabbi who has achieved great success in reviving, for Jewish residents, a neighborhood that had been abandoned by its Jewish population and has electrified the entire Washington Jewish community with innovative programs – raised “questions” about AgriProcessors’ kashruth in this widely read forum.

Rabbi Herzfeld’s column cites the following three grounds for questioning the religious suitability of AgriProcessors’ meat: First, he says that “there is precedent for declaring something nonkosher on the basis of how employees are treated.” The precedent he cites is that Rabbi Yisroel Salanter, the highly respected 19th century founder of the “Mussar” movement, is, according to Rabbi Herzfeld, “famously believed to have refused to certify a matzo factory as kosher on the grounds that the workers were being treated unfairly.” Rabbi Yisroel Salanter is as gold-plated an authority as one can imagine. If he actually said that unfair treatment of workers renders a product non-kosher, one would have to give that ruling great weight.

Second, Rabbi Herzfeld cites allegations in an affidavit filed by the immigration authorities who raided the AgriProcessor plant in Iowa on May 12 to arrest illegal aliens employed there. He says that the affidavit alleges “that an employee was physically abused by a rabbi on the floor of the plant.” Rabbi Herzfeld says that “this calls into question the reliability and judgment of the rabbi in charge of making sure the food was kosher.” If, in fact, the “rabbi in charge of making sure the food was kosher” did assault an AgriProcessors employee, I would share Rabbi Herzfeld’s doubts regarding that rabbi’s “reliability and judgment” on issues relating to kashruth.

Third, Rabbi Herzfeld points to the arrest of “two workers who oversaw the poultry and beef division” for “helping illegal immigrants falsify documents.” He says that if these supervisors “were willing to break immigration laws, one could reasonably ask whether they would be likely to show the same lack of concern for Jewish dietary laws.” This is a reasonable question if, as one might assume from Rabbi Herzfeld’s description of the arrests, the arrested supervisors had any responsibility whatever for AgriProcessors’ compliance with “Jewish dietary laws.”

But it takes a little digging beneath the surface of Rabbi Herzfeld’s assertions to demonstrate how fallacious they are.

First, the Reb Yisroel Salanter story that he describes as “famous” does not appear in any biography of Rabbi Salanter that I have been able to find. Rabbi Hillel Goldberg’s marvelous history of the Mussar Movement titled “The Fire Within,” which has a comprehensive section on Rabbi Salanter, tells only of his having advised his students that, when they were preparing matzos for Passover, they should not overwork or make excessive demands of the female workers who were kneading the dough and otherwise preparing for the matzo baking. That same account appears in a Hebrew volume titled “Bikkurei Shai,” written by the Chief Rabbi of Givatayim, Israel.

I e-mailed Rabbi Hillel Goldberg to ask him whether he had ever heard that Rabbi Salanter had refused to certify the kashruth of a matzo factory because it was unfair to its workers. He replied that the only story on this subject that he knew of was the one that had appeared in his book. He added that it was not likely that Rabbi Salanter would ever have given a certification ("hashgacha") on matzo because he “famously” avoided acting as a community rabbi. And I myself wonder whether it is not an anachronism for Rabbi Herzfeld to ascribe to the mid-19th century the community practices of today. At a time when all matzos were being hand-baked (and the rabbinic controversy over the kashruth of machine-made matzos was still several decades in the future), what “matzo factory” was seeking the “certification” of Rabbi Salanter?

Second, a closer look is warranted at Rabbi Herzfeld’s assertion regarding the case of the abusive “rabbi.” Nowhere in the government’s affidavit is any accusation reported against any rabbi whose job was “making sure the food was kosher.” The term “rabbi” is used interchangeably throughout the affidavit with the term “Hasidic Jew.” Obviously, any employee on the floor of the AgriProcessors plant who had a beard and wore a yarmulke was described by the government’s Guatemalan informant as a “rabbi” or “Hasidic Jew.” If one such Jewish employee – with no responsibility for kashruth – abused an employee, it does not “call into question the reliability and judgment of the rabbi in charge of making sure the food was kosher.”

Third is Rabbi Herzfeld’s reliance on the arrest of two supervisors. Would the arrested supervisors – who, one assumes from Rabbi Herzfeld’s question, are either certifying rabbis or, at least, Hasidic Jews responsible in some manner for kashruth –show the same disdain for Jewish dietary laws as for American immigration law? Rabbi Herzfeld does not tell us that the two arrested supervisors were named Juan Carlos Guerrero-Espinoza and Martin De La Rosa-Loera – supervisors at AgriProcessors whose concern or lack of concern for Jewish dietary laws is as irrelevant as one can imagine.
At a time of the year when we recall that vicious reports to authorities led to the destruction of the Temple, Rabbi Herzfeld might take a more careful look at the grounds for his public allegations.

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