Thread: 12 Jewish Congressmen blast Agriprocessor Pres/Rabbi

12 Jewish Congressman Blast Agriprocessors In Letter
September 24, 2008

agri3.jpgToday, several Jewish members of Congress sent the enclosed letter to Rabbi Aaron Rubashkin, the President and Director of Agriprocessors, the major kosher slaughterhouse and meat distribution firm whose plant was the site of a major immigration raid in August. The letter expresses deep concern over the company’s alleged mistreatment of its workers and animals and the violation of U.S. laws and Jewish standards.

Signatories to the letter include Representatives Gary Ackerman (D-NY), Howard Berman (D-CA), Henry Waxman (D-CA), Steve Israel (D-NY), Eliot Engel (D-NY), Ron Klein (D-FL), Barney Frank (D-Mass), Robert Wexler (D-FL), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Nita Lowey (D-NY), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) and Rahm Emanuel (D-IL). The correspondence was organized by Berman, the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee; Ackerman, the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia and Waxman, the Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The text of the letter is enclosed below:

September 23, 2008
Rabbi Aaron Rubashkin
President and Director - Agriprocessors, Inc.PO Box 920 Postville, IA 52162

Dear Rabbi Rubashkin:
We write to express our deep concern as Jewish Members of Congress regarding recent reports concerning Agriprocessors’ business and labor practices. The allegations about the company’s treatment of its workers and the animals raise serious questions about the company’s compliance with U.S. law and the highest standards of Jewish law and tradition concerning kashrut–a subject certainly beyond the scope of the U.S. government’s concern, but one of considerable importance to the Jewish communities in our districts.

We were shocked by the May 12, 2008 raid on your facility by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which led to the arrest of nearly 400 of your employees, each of whom was working and living in the United States as an illegal immigrant. We were absolutely stunned, however, to learn that, in the course of their investigations, federal authorities reportedly uncovered a methamphetamine laboratory and a Social Security card-forgery ring, as well as the use of child labor, inside the Agriprocessors facility. While federal investigators are still in the process of determining the extent that company management was aware of these activities, the decision by the Iowa Attorney General to file some 9,000 separate child labor charges is deeply troubling.

The company has also opposed efforts by employees to unionize, disregarding orders by the National Labor Relations Board and the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington to honor a vote by workers at Agriprocessors’ distribution center in Brooklyn, New York to join the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.

Most recently, Agriprocessors has challenged these orders on the basis that some of the employees who supported the union effort were undocumented, despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Sure-Tan Inc. v. the National Labor Relations Board that the National Labor Relations Act pertains to employees regardless of their immigration status. If the allegations about Agriprocessors’ knowledge of the hiring of undocumented workers are true, the company would appear to have a brazen interest in abiding by U.S. laws at its own convenience.

In addition to our alarm over reports of your company’s extensive, deplorable and illegal treatment of many of its workers, we have been disgusted by revelations about Agriprocessors’ slaughtering practices and the company’s treatment of animals. Between January 1, 2006 and January 24, 2007, Agriprocessors was issued five separate citations by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for faulty monitoring of mad cow disease and more than a dozen citations for fecal and bile contamination of beef and poultry, which resulted in two separate meat recalls. A 2005 report by the USDA Inspector General also found evidence of inhumane slaughter practices.

After an undercover investigation by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) in 2004 showed footage of cattle walking inside the Agriprocessors facility with slit throats - a grotesque and unethical practice altogether - the company asked Dr. Temple Grandin, a well-respected expert in the fields of animal rights and humane slaughtering practices, to tour the facility and recommend reforms.

More recently, another undercover PETA investigation filmed the use of a practice known as “gouging,â€

Few have done more to impede legislation to end illegal immigration to the United States than these 12 very liberal senators. Yet now they express "shock" to learn that many of the workers employed by Agriprocessors were illegal aliens - a practice endemic in the U.S. meatpacking industry. What hypocrisy.

Signatories to the letter include Representatives Gary Ackerman (D-NY), Howard Berman (D-CA), Henry Waxman (D-CA), Steve Israel (D-NY), Eliot Engel (D-NY), Ron Klein (D-FL), Barney Frank (D-Mass), Robert Wexler (D-FL), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Nita Lowey (D-NY), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) and Rahm Emanuel (D-IL). The correspondence was organized by Berman, the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee; Ackerman, the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia and Waxman, the Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Employers are not document expert and they do not want to discriminate. So employers can hire anyone standing in front of them.

I-9s filled out and put in the file cabinet of course. But no one is required by Federal law to verify the I-9s.

This negative employer conduct has been going on for more than twenty years and these fine Congress people are just now noticing the poor behavior of employers.

Americans, we can only hope that these few Congress people will start finding all the loopholes employers and undocumented workers are using to damage American Citizens.

Originally Posted by Texas2step

Few have done more to impede legislation to end illegal immigration to the United States than these 12 very liberal senators. Yet now they express "shock" to learn that many of the workers employed by Agriprocessors were illegal aliens - a practice endemic in the U.S. meatpacking industry. What hypocrisy.

Things obviously can work very slowly sometimes in the Federal Government. I applaud these Congressman for actually speaking out where they knew it would get publicity rather than sitting on their hand like they do most of the time.