Read Jon Tevlin’s excellent in-depth article, There’s something bad in this town.
Rabbi Allen of Beth Jacob Congregation knew about Agriprocessors’ problems a long time before the raid. He knew the most recent CEO, Sholom Rubashkin, who for a time lived in St. Paul’s Highland Park before moving to Postville. After reading an article critical of the company, Allen led a delegation of Twin Cities rabbis to Postville in 2006.
Workers told story after story of long hours, unsafe conditions and wages as low as $5 an hour. They told him many of the same things now in court documents.
“They appeared to me to do everything possible to maximize the bottom line at the expense of human dignity,” Allen said of the plant owners.
The Minnesota rabbis tried to work with the Rubashkins. “I think if they had followed our advice, this may never have happened,” he said.
Allen is now leading a national movement to create a certification program called Hekhsher Tzedek, much like fair trade agreements, which would ensure not only that kosher meat is prepared properly, but also that workers are treated fairly.
Jews in the Midwest weren’t blindsided by this scandal, and tried to get the Lubavitchers to obey the law. It was never a secret what the Rubashkins were up to. From day one word got out all over northern Iowa about the bigoted Jews who’d moved to Postville. Initially, this transplanted community rejected all welcoming efforts and determinedly kept to themselves, refusing to even engage in small talk with locals. And the locals, understandably, took deep offense. So much so that Agriprocessors launched a PR effort to improve community relations (without having to mingle with the locals anymore than was absolutely necessary).
But what I don’t understand is why the locals turned a blind eye to the Guatemalans. Only an idiot would think that our government had granted work visas to that many Central Americans.
This is one of the last chapters in a long and sordid story about Iowa labor. When I was active in that movement in the ’70s, meatpacking unions across the state were under constant fire. It’s a vicious industry, and men who own plants that profit from selling meat, blood and guts aren’t squeamish about breaking unions. But the men who worked in packing plants were hard cases as well, and most of the packers ended up shutting down their plants rather than continue to pay union wages (living wages earned through demanding physical labor).
This was but a part of the great labor realignment Reagan brought with him. In Reagan’s first term, Iowa lost over ten percent of their work force. Tens and tens of thousands of Iowans were forced to leave the state to find employment.
Came the ’80s and Terry Branstead became governor. Branstead opened the doors to Iowa Beef Packers, and they swooped into Iowa with a vengeance, buying up old packing plants for pennies on the dollar and then bringing in Mexican laborers because even out-of-work Iowans wouldn’t do packing house work for the low wages offered by IBP.
It got so bad that state Attorney General Tom Miller sent letters out to every conceivable Hispanic organization warning them that IBP’s wages and working conditions did not offer decent job opportunities. The fact was that the Mexican workers ended up living in crowded apartments because they didn’t make enough money to pay rent. Despite having dangerous jobs, they had no health insurance, and IBP quickly developed a record of lying about workplace injuries. The workers were mostly men living apart from their families, locked into low wage jobs that didn’t permit them to bring their families to Iowa.
Agriprocessors simply moved into an existing bad situation, then proceeded to make it worse.
Read Tevlin’s article. It is only because of the lawless nature of the Bush administration that Agriprocessors’ owners are not facing trial. And God help them if they ever are put on trial. Kosher meat is a monopoly, and Agriprocessors could have raised their prices at any time, allowing them to easily pay living wages to legal employees. They chose not to. They chose to break labor laws, they chose to dehumanize their workers, they chose to reject the embrace of the local community and to instead develop an insular community.
It’s that last bit that’s the most telling. The Lubavitchers moved from Brooklyn to rural Iowa, and then sealed themselves off so their children wouldn’t be contaminated by the locals. To them, there was no difference between the gangs of Brooklyn and the church softball leagues of northeastern Iowa. They could have paid high wages without significantly impacting their sales (it’s good to have a monopoly on a product that’s endorsed by your religion).
I think the Jewish community need to recognize that within their faith, they harbor bigots every bit as vile as the worst Aryan Nation villains. And no, I don’t think I’m telling them anything new. I’m just encouraging Jews to be more open in their rejection of extremist beliefs. Postville was never in danger of becoming the Jewish Waco, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a strong element of Branch Davidian nuttiness permeating the Lubavitcher movement, a religious sect as fucked up as anything Sun Myung Moon or Jim Jones ever concocted. Seriously, on a theological level, the Mormon faith makes more sense than the bastardized Judaism practiced by Lubatvitchers, a personality-centered cult that should have disbanded when Rebbe Schneerson died.
Chabad Hasidim believe that there is no successor to Schneerson and all the suggested successors declined the mantle of leadership in the days after his death. Chabad Hasidim believe that he is still their leader, guiding them from beyond the grave through prayer and signs. Some Chabad Hasidim believe that he will return as the Messiah; this view has led to controversy with other Orthodox groups and within Chabad itself. Some, quoting Talmudic passages and statements that Schneerson himself made, refuse to put the typical honorifics that Jews normally use for the dead after his name. Schneerson’s messianism or divinity is not advocated in any of Chabad’s official literature, but such literature is published and distributed by people who hold that belief. Chabad-Lubavitch leaders have repeatedly condemned the Meshichists (messianists) in the strongest possible terms.
Kudos to the Twin Cities Jewish community for recognizing the problems being created by these transplanted Lubavitchers early on, and for trying to help fix a situation that predictably blew up in everyone’s faces.
And congratulations to Jon Tevlin for capturing so many different aspects of this complex story. Read the whole thing — each online page documents still more atrocities as the anti-labor beliefs of Ronald Reagan accumulated in one vile misogynist management experiment that all but destroyed a once prosperous Iowa community.
(This is just a picture of how they mistreated the animals. What they did to their workers was worse.)
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I was talking to an old, dear friend this morning. She is disgusted with the Democrats and the Republicans, and is thinking about Libertarianism as an alternative, but she admits her ignorance. Even though she’s a teetotaler herself, she’s been thinking a lot about the hypocrisy of banning doped athletes while allowing the creative class to make their livelihood while often stoned or high — where’s the consistency in that?, she wondered.
The conversation drifted to other forms of stimulants in other systems — like high finance. She saw the value in legislating against payday loans, for instance, or corrupt Keating-style S&L’s, which clean out the candy store, screw the little people (like her) while the rich get their golden parachutes and tens of millions.
We also talked about how the deeper question goes to what kind of civic culture we want. Do we want the wild west, where there are no laws against semi-automatic handguns that will be pulled out and used against you if there’s a dispute in the express line checkout lane? And on an international level, nuclear weapons pulled out and threatened against smaller nations that don’t even have them? And where’s the consistency in banning handguns but allowing nuclear arms?, what sense does that make?
I think we ended up agreeing that regulation — self-regulation, and joint regulation on part of society/culture as a whole — should be part and parcel of the same thing. There are different kinds of technology, and the problem is we’ve thought up some truly strange things that are now ingrained. Like usury. Should we be libertarian/anarchist and allow anybody to charge whatever kind of rates they want?, even if that means that mom and dad — who are 23 and ignorant — get in over their head and the kids start going hungry and crying and so they start getting beat by dad, who wasn’t raised smart emotionally or intellectually and so reacts the only way he knows. With physical power.
So education becomes part of it, too. Prior education and ongoing education. What are the use of laws if people are too stupid to buy into the concept?
We also talked about whether change comes from an interior spiritual-intellectual revolution, or from an exterior force (laws, regulation). In the case of an anti-smoking ban that says you can’t smoke in a bar or restaurant in Chicago, over time — people will become healthier, and new customs and expectations will be a part of the social landscape. A good change, but it takes a while to settle in. And it didn’t come from the inside in all cases. It will often have been imposed from the inside (depending on the individual case under discussion).
I dunno. Life is an ongoing process, you can’t win or succeed today. You keep going hour by hour. Regulation’s part of it. Education’s part of it. Laws are part of it. Community standards and being part of your community are part of it.
Taking responsibility — as a person, as a nation — is maybe the hugest part of it. If it’s 10 degrees outside and you’re in a restaurant and you want a cigarette, how badly do you want it? Are you willing to go outside? If you’re a Christian, how committed are you to living like Jesus lived, down the line? Badly enough to make enemies and put yourself in personal harm? If you want fiscal responsibility as a nation, do we want it enough to tax and spend (generally speaking, the left) rather than credit card and spend (generally, the right)? If you want nuclear weapons for self protection, are you committed to the right of other nations to have nuclear weapons for self protection? Etc.
[...] Learning from Postville [...]
The Agriprocessors Raid brings up many different issues. I do not think the Rubashkins have heard the last of the federal government.
Kosher Gate