ShortJohnSilver
2nd June 2011, 06:49 AM
It is both interesting and enlightening to read between the lines on this article...
Agriprocessors is a large meat packing plant in Iowa run by Orthodox Jews.
They hired only illegals (booking a profit from paying less) and it was alleged they even cheated the illegals on the hours they paid them for.
Of course, the expenses of schooling, policing, health care, etc. for these illegals fell on the town and state, not on the business. Since the workers got paid such low wages, they got free health care, for example.
After a big immigration raid, they began to be noticed by the press and various abuses were exposed.
So, a Conservative rabbi starts a new "kosher" organization, using his media contacts to organize a shakedown of the Orthodox owners of the plant. Note the labor activist/union organizers salivating over the thought of getting in on the action as well.
"We tried to keep this matter Jew-to-Jew" (to avoid negative media coverage)...
Note that the concept that the Orthodox Jews should never have hired illegals in the first place, doesn't seem to be a consideration.
Remember too that the Orthodox aren't happy with a rival group of Jews trying to make their own pile of cash off K certification by stealing market share.
http://www.yated.com//content.asp?contentid=380
bolded emphasis is mine in the quoted article:
Magen Tzedek: The Sham(e) Behind the Shield Part II
Wednesday, June 01, 2011
By Debbie Maimon, Yated
The public relations campaign by Magen Tzedek, a new kosher certification devised by Conservative Rabbi Morris Allen of Minnesota and actively promoted by his movement, has raised the company’s profile—and also brought it under sharp scrutiny.
Magen Tzedek grew out of the smear campaign waged against Agriprocessors and the Rubashkin family before and after the 2008 immigration raid on their Postville, Iowa plant. It has become a rallying point for Conservative leaders to galvanize their struggling movement.
The evolving story of Magen Tzedek is one of the most disturbing chapters in the Rubashkin saga. In turning back the pages of its short history, we confront a chilling tale driven by falsehood, deceit and injustice. Perhaps it would be best not to examine the ugly episode too closely.
Yet, Magen Tzedek is perceived as an effort by Conservative leaders to inject themselves into a highly complex realm of halacha where their expertise, not to mention respect for halacha, is sadly lacking. This bid for a market share in kashrus certification threatens the integrity of kashrus in this country and cannot go unchallenged.
Rabbi Allen and his Conservative colleagues assert that Magen Tzedek was created as a response to unethical treatment of workers in Agriprocessors. But the paper and media trail they left behind them in the company’s wreckage tells a far different narrative.
A close look at that trail exposes the roots of Allen’s social-justice program as mired in the slander its founder spread about the Postville plant and the Rubashkin family. Rabbi Allen preached humanity and compassion toward workers and immigrants, all the while casting stones at a beleaguered fellow Jew struggling to save his company and family from destruction.
He promoted Magen Tzedek as the solution to what he termed “systemic” abuses in the kosher food industry, and then campaigned to prove the existence of those abuses at Agriprocessors as a way to legitimize his new agency.
(snipped)
Lurid ‘Crimes’?
Rabbi Allen became involved with Agriprocessors in the summer of 2006, some months after an article appeared in the Forward newspaper attacking the plant for inhumane treatment of immigrant workers, and for “breeding fear, injury and short pay” among them.
The article accused Agriprocessors of forcing its immigrant workforce to live in squalor and fear, too intimidated to protest their exploitation and ill-treatment by their employers. The uproar sparked by the article prompted immediate fact-finding tours by Rabbi Asher Zelingold of Minneapolis together with the Spanish-speaking Dr. Carlos Carbonera (who later testified about his findings at Sholom Rubashkin’s sentencing hearing in April, 2009).
Rabbi Menachem Genack of the OU and a group of Orthodox rabbis and laymen toured the plant as well. These groups published reports that not only refuted the Forward’s rabid allegations but noted Agriprocessors high ratings for safety and lower rates of worker accident and injury.
Allen conducted his tour as part of a five-member team, including labor activist Vic Rosenthal and labor consultant Avi Lyon. Allen’s group was welcomed and personally given a tour by Sholom Rubashkin at the request of Rabbi Zeilingold. The commission agreed that the tour would be for the sole purpose of checking out the Forward’s allegations.
Testimony Frozen In Time
The fateful tour of Agri went well. Much later it would be used deceptively as a tool to publicly pillory Sholom Mordechai. But immediately following the visit, Allen penned a letter of warm appreciation to him, with an enthusiastic, even congratulatory message.
“I want to thank you for the time you and your staff spent with us last week. All of us were impressed with the consideration shown us,” Allen wrote, going on to praise the Rubashkin family and the Agriprocessors workforce. “You have much to be proud of as regards the production of Kosher meat.”
Allen stressed that he and his team had conducted an exhaustive two-day investigation, meeting “with people from the government, those connected to the healthcare system in around Postville and with those associated with organized labor.” The commission’s members “were impressed by the Rubashkins’ contributions to Postville and encouraged by their commitment to making Agri a plant where the values displayed on your website are able to be lived out fully.” [Morris Allen letter to Sholom Rubashkin, August 2006]
One examines the letter in vain for the slightest reference to adverse working conditions, company policies or treatment of employees. In fact, no mention whatsoever is made about the Forward article in this or any other written correspondence from Allen to Sholom Mordechai.
Labor Activist: “Exciting”
Vic Rosenthal, executive director of Jewish Community Action, posted his own reactions to the tour on the organization’s web site. Strikingly, after a perfunctory mention of the Forward article, Rosenthal, like Allen, leaps over the entire subject of whether the commission found any basis for the article’s lurid allegations against Agriprocessors.
“Last week, [Aug 16, 2006], I had the opportunity to tour the Agriprocessors Plant in Postville, Iowa. This visit was spurred by an article in the Forward which severely criticized the plant for violations of worker health and safety, among other problems,” Rosenthal wrote.
“We spent nearly two full days there, meeting with government officials, workers, lay and religious leaders in the community, union reps, and the owner and key staff from the plant itself.”
Rosenthal cites his expectation of being able to implement a pro-labor agenda at the plant. “For the first time, I had a chance to tour a meat-packing plant,” he beams. “Most exciting about this visit is the opportunity to work on an issue that is very important to the Jewish community, kosher meat, while also improving conditions for workers and protecting their rights.”
(Mr. Rosenthal Goes To Postville, Jewish Community Action, August 2006)
Rubashkin-Bashing Begins
Months later, in stark contrast to his and Rosenthal’s enthusiastic letters following the Agri tour, Allen’s tune changed. He began to publicly malign the meat-packing plant for “inadequate or non-existent worker safety training,”’ for “concern about unsafe chemical use”’ and “unclean and unsafe lunchroom conditions.” (Forward, Dec. 2006)
Allen’s slandering of the kosher slaughterhouse in interviews with the media went hand in hand with actively pumping up the need for Magen Tzedek as an ethics watchdog for kosher food companies. (New York Times, July 2007, Rabbi Morris Allen Blog, Oct. 2007).
There were awkward moments when his innovations hit a snag. One such moment happened in an interview with a NY Times reporter when Allen was asked if he had been able to validate the Forward’s allegations. Allen was evasive.
“We were not able to verify everything,” he hedged, “but we found things that were equally painful…”
He went on to air his dissatisfaction over low starting wages and the need for more safety training in Spanish. He also criticized the plant for offering only one option for health insurance coverage—overlooking the fact that free heath care is available at the clinic in town. (free health care clinic - paid for by taxpayer $$$ - SJS.)
Regarding the tales of squalor, forced labor, rampant injuries, dirty facilities and lack of safety training that he came to investigate, he had nothing to say. But his silence spoke volumes.
Despite being caught at fudging the truth, Allen continued to link his promotion of Magen Tzedek with disparaging comments about Agriprocessors, always vaguely worded as “health and safety concerns.”
This stream of negativity was bolstered by mudslinging Forward articles and by a corporate campaign formally launched by the UFCW against the meat-packing plant.
Surprise in St. Paul
In an interview with Yated, former Postville city councilman Aaron Goldsmith notes that at some point it became obvious that Rabbi Allen was working in close cooperation with labor and union activists.
Goldsmith had accompanied Sholom Mordechai to St. Paul, Minn., to what had been billed as a private meeting with Allen.
“Sholom was willing to sacrifice time from an overwhelming schedule to travel to St. Paul in order to assuage Rabbi Allen’s concerns about ethical treatment of workers at Agri. At that time, we believed that Allen was sincerely motivated by these concerns and was acting independently,” Goldsmith said.
He recalled his surprise upon discovering two others sitting with Allen in the social hall where the meeting took place.
“We walked into the room and there are two men whom Sholom had met during their previous visit to Agri as part of the Conservative commission—Avi Lyon and Victor Rosenthal! We were very taken aback. A meeting with Rabbi Allen had become a forum for labor activists. They put their agenda right on the table.”
The meeting focused on a bid by Allen, Rosenthal and Lyon to have input into upper management decisions regarding some of the company’s policies. Goldsmith said he helped defuse the tensions by comparing the relationship between Agriprocessors and the rabbis overseeing shechitah as a ‘marriage’ with the halacha supplying the “glue.”
“What’s your role in this marriage?” Goldsmith quipped to Allen and his friends. “You’re the mother-in-law. You can make suggestions but we can’t let you meddle in the marriage.”
“Everyone laughed and the tension broke,” recalled Goldsmith. “But gaining a foothold in Agri’s policies was clearly a goal with these people. To up the ante, they had pledged to use their media contacts to rehabilitate Agri’s reputation. That image had been badly tarnished by the Forward’s attacks, the earlier PETA campaign and union harassment.”
Agriprocessors is a large meat packing plant in Iowa run by Orthodox Jews.
They hired only illegals (booking a profit from paying less) and it was alleged they even cheated the illegals on the hours they paid them for.
Of course, the expenses of schooling, policing, health care, etc. for these illegals fell on the town and state, not on the business. Since the workers got paid such low wages, they got free health care, for example.
After a big immigration raid, they began to be noticed by the press and various abuses were exposed.
So, a Conservative rabbi starts a new "kosher" organization, using his media contacts to organize a shakedown of the Orthodox owners of the plant. Note the labor activist/union organizers salivating over the thought of getting in on the action as well.
"We tried to keep this matter Jew-to-Jew" (to avoid negative media coverage)...
Note that the concept that the Orthodox Jews should never have hired illegals in the first place, doesn't seem to be a consideration.
Remember too that the Orthodox aren't happy with a rival group of Jews trying to make their own pile of cash off K certification by stealing market share.
http://www.yated.com//content.asp?contentid=380
bolded emphasis is mine in the quoted article:
Magen Tzedek: The Sham(e) Behind the Shield Part II
Wednesday, June 01, 2011
By Debbie Maimon, Yated
The public relations campaign by Magen Tzedek, a new kosher certification devised by Conservative Rabbi Morris Allen of Minnesota and actively promoted by his movement, has raised the company’s profile—and also brought it under sharp scrutiny.
Magen Tzedek grew out of the smear campaign waged against Agriprocessors and the Rubashkin family before and after the 2008 immigration raid on their Postville, Iowa plant. It has become a rallying point for Conservative leaders to galvanize their struggling movement.
The evolving story of Magen Tzedek is one of the most disturbing chapters in the Rubashkin saga. In turning back the pages of its short history, we confront a chilling tale driven by falsehood, deceit and injustice. Perhaps it would be best not to examine the ugly episode too closely.
Yet, Magen Tzedek is perceived as an effort by Conservative leaders to inject themselves into a highly complex realm of halacha where their expertise, not to mention respect for halacha, is sadly lacking. This bid for a market share in kashrus certification threatens the integrity of kashrus in this country and cannot go unchallenged.
Rabbi Allen and his Conservative colleagues assert that Magen Tzedek was created as a response to unethical treatment of workers in Agriprocessors. But the paper and media trail they left behind them in the company’s wreckage tells a far different narrative.
A close look at that trail exposes the roots of Allen’s social-justice program as mired in the slander its founder spread about the Postville plant and the Rubashkin family. Rabbi Allen preached humanity and compassion toward workers and immigrants, all the while casting stones at a beleaguered fellow Jew struggling to save his company and family from destruction.
He promoted Magen Tzedek as the solution to what he termed “systemic” abuses in the kosher food industry, and then campaigned to prove the existence of those abuses at Agriprocessors as a way to legitimize his new agency.
(snipped)
Lurid ‘Crimes’?
Rabbi Allen became involved with Agriprocessors in the summer of 2006, some months after an article appeared in the Forward newspaper attacking the plant for inhumane treatment of immigrant workers, and for “breeding fear, injury and short pay” among them.
The article accused Agriprocessors of forcing its immigrant workforce to live in squalor and fear, too intimidated to protest their exploitation and ill-treatment by their employers. The uproar sparked by the article prompted immediate fact-finding tours by Rabbi Asher Zelingold of Minneapolis together with the Spanish-speaking Dr. Carlos Carbonera (who later testified about his findings at Sholom Rubashkin’s sentencing hearing in April, 2009).
Rabbi Menachem Genack of the OU and a group of Orthodox rabbis and laymen toured the plant as well. These groups published reports that not only refuted the Forward’s rabid allegations but noted Agriprocessors high ratings for safety and lower rates of worker accident and injury.
Allen conducted his tour as part of a five-member team, including labor activist Vic Rosenthal and labor consultant Avi Lyon. Allen’s group was welcomed and personally given a tour by Sholom Rubashkin at the request of Rabbi Zeilingold. The commission agreed that the tour would be for the sole purpose of checking out the Forward’s allegations.
Testimony Frozen In Time
The fateful tour of Agri went well. Much later it would be used deceptively as a tool to publicly pillory Sholom Mordechai. But immediately following the visit, Allen penned a letter of warm appreciation to him, with an enthusiastic, even congratulatory message.
“I want to thank you for the time you and your staff spent with us last week. All of us were impressed with the consideration shown us,” Allen wrote, going on to praise the Rubashkin family and the Agriprocessors workforce. “You have much to be proud of as regards the production of Kosher meat.”
Allen stressed that he and his team had conducted an exhaustive two-day investigation, meeting “with people from the government, those connected to the healthcare system in around Postville and with those associated with organized labor.” The commission’s members “were impressed by the Rubashkins’ contributions to Postville and encouraged by their commitment to making Agri a plant where the values displayed on your website are able to be lived out fully.” [Morris Allen letter to Sholom Rubashkin, August 2006]
One examines the letter in vain for the slightest reference to adverse working conditions, company policies or treatment of employees. In fact, no mention whatsoever is made about the Forward article in this or any other written correspondence from Allen to Sholom Mordechai.
Labor Activist: “Exciting”
Vic Rosenthal, executive director of Jewish Community Action, posted his own reactions to the tour on the organization’s web site. Strikingly, after a perfunctory mention of the Forward article, Rosenthal, like Allen, leaps over the entire subject of whether the commission found any basis for the article’s lurid allegations against Agriprocessors.
“Last week, [Aug 16, 2006], I had the opportunity to tour the Agriprocessors Plant in Postville, Iowa. This visit was spurred by an article in the Forward which severely criticized the plant for violations of worker health and safety, among other problems,” Rosenthal wrote.
“We spent nearly two full days there, meeting with government officials, workers, lay and religious leaders in the community, union reps, and the owner and key staff from the plant itself.”
Rosenthal cites his expectation of being able to implement a pro-labor agenda at the plant. “For the first time, I had a chance to tour a meat-packing plant,” he beams. “Most exciting about this visit is the opportunity to work on an issue that is very important to the Jewish community, kosher meat, while also improving conditions for workers and protecting their rights.”
(Mr. Rosenthal Goes To Postville, Jewish Community Action, August 2006)
Rubashkin-Bashing Begins
Months later, in stark contrast to his and Rosenthal’s enthusiastic letters following the Agri tour, Allen’s tune changed. He began to publicly malign the meat-packing plant for “inadequate or non-existent worker safety training,”’ for “concern about unsafe chemical use”’ and “unclean and unsafe lunchroom conditions.” (Forward, Dec. 2006)
Allen’s slandering of the kosher slaughterhouse in interviews with the media went hand in hand with actively pumping up the need for Magen Tzedek as an ethics watchdog for kosher food companies. (New York Times, July 2007, Rabbi Morris Allen Blog, Oct. 2007).
There were awkward moments when his innovations hit a snag. One such moment happened in an interview with a NY Times reporter when Allen was asked if he had been able to validate the Forward’s allegations. Allen was evasive.
“We were not able to verify everything,” he hedged, “but we found things that were equally painful…”
He went on to air his dissatisfaction over low starting wages and the need for more safety training in Spanish. He also criticized the plant for offering only one option for health insurance coverage—overlooking the fact that free heath care is available at the clinic in town. (free health care clinic - paid for by taxpayer $$$ - SJS.)
Regarding the tales of squalor, forced labor, rampant injuries, dirty facilities and lack of safety training that he came to investigate, he had nothing to say. But his silence spoke volumes.
Despite being caught at fudging the truth, Allen continued to link his promotion of Magen Tzedek with disparaging comments about Agriprocessors, always vaguely worded as “health and safety concerns.”
This stream of negativity was bolstered by mudslinging Forward articles and by a corporate campaign formally launched by the UFCW against the meat-packing plant.
Surprise in St. Paul
In an interview with Yated, former Postville city councilman Aaron Goldsmith notes that at some point it became obvious that Rabbi Allen was working in close cooperation with labor and union activists.
Goldsmith had accompanied Sholom Mordechai to St. Paul, Minn., to what had been billed as a private meeting with Allen.
“Sholom was willing to sacrifice time from an overwhelming schedule to travel to St. Paul in order to assuage Rabbi Allen’s concerns about ethical treatment of workers at Agri. At that time, we believed that Allen was sincerely motivated by these concerns and was acting independently,” Goldsmith said.
He recalled his surprise upon discovering two others sitting with Allen in the social hall where the meeting took place.
“We walked into the room and there are two men whom Sholom had met during their previous visit to Agri as part of the Conservative commission—Avi Lyon and Victor Rosenthal! We were very taken aback. A meeting with Rabbi Allen had become a forum for labor activists. They put their agenda right on the table.”
The meeting focused on a bid by Allen, Rosenthal and Lyon to have input into upper management decisions regarding some of the company’s policies. Goldsmith said he helped defuse the tensions by comparing the relationship between Agriprocessors and the rabbis overseeing shechitah as a ‘marriage’ with the halacha supplying the “glue.”
“What’s your role in this marriage?” Goldsmith quipped to Allen and his friends. “You’re the mother-in-law. You can make suggestions but we can’t let you meddle in the marriage.”
“Everyone laughed and the tension broke,” recalled Goldsmith. “But gaining a foothold in Agri’s policies was clearly a goal with these people. To up the ante, they had pledged to use their media contacts to rehabilitate Agri’s reputation. That image had been badly tarnished by the Forward’s attacks, the earlier PETA campaign and union harassment.”