Thread: AgriProcessors Changes Practices

Agriprocessors changes practices; some in Postville still skeptical
By Orlan Love
The Gazette
orlan.love@gazettecommunications.com


POSTVILLE - Troubled meatpacker Agriprocessors appears to have entered a new era of legal employees, higher wages and improved working conditions.

Since the May 12 immigration raid that stunned the world and cost the company at least half its nearly 1,000-member work force, Agriprocessors has dramatically increased its starting wage, adopted the federal E-Verify system to ensure its workers are legally qualified to work in the United States and hired a firm headed by a retired federal prosecutor to oversee compliance with applicable laws.

"I think they are making an honest effort and will follow through with it," Postville Mayor Robert Penrod said. "They have to. Their future depends on it. They are on the borderline."


Company history

A book of kosher law sits in a control room for the Agriprocessors plant. Kosher dietary laws stipulate what foods can be eaten as well as how an animal is slaughtered and processed.

In its two decades in Postville, the company has profited handsomely from the labors of low-paid illegal workers too fearful to complain. The privately held Agriprocessors does not release its annual earnings, but Hoovers.com, a Dun & Bradstreet subsidiary, lists 2007 sales of $78.9 million.

A review of citations also shows it has had to be forced to obey laws regulating the environment, the welfare of its workers and the safety of its products.

Among Agriprocessors' more widely publicized recent troubles, it paid a $600,000 settlement to the Environmental Protection Agency in 2006 to resolve wastewater pollution problems — a payment that was postponed through years of expensive litigation and ongoing pollution.

That same year, a report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's inspector general, compiled after reviewing an undercover People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals video of a cow reeling after a botched slaughter attempt, concluded that Agriprocessors repeatedly violated provisions of the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act.

Earlier this year, the company was assessed $182,000 in fines for 39 state health, safety and labor violations, but the fine was later reduced to $42,000 after the company agreed to correct some of the violations, which included improper storage and handling of hazardous chemicals and inadequate training in the use of respirators and handling of blood-borne pathogens.

Occupational Safety and Health Administration logs show records of incidents that led to five amputations, dozens of reports of broken bones, eye injuries and hearing loss at the plant between 2001 and 2006.

New approach

Workers leave the chicken line to take a half-hour break at Agriprocessors in Postville on Tuesday. Former workers at the plant complained of working long hours without breaks, but regular breaks are now part of the day, company officials said during a tour of the plant last week.

Because doing the right thing has not always come naturally to Agriprocessors, many people wonder if the company's recent attention to legal compliance and the needs of workers represents true reform or public relations.

"I can tell you, the people I'm working with seem to fully understand the benefits of legal compliance," said James Martin, a retired federal prosecutor whose St. Louis-based Prevene Group was hired June 6 to upgrade Agriprocessors' corporate citizenship.

The reforms bespeak a sincere effort to upgrade Agriprocessors' hiring practices and treatment of workers, said Aaron Goldsmith, a Postville businessman and former City Council member who spoke for the company's owners during a tour of the plant on Tuesday.

Company founder Aaron Rubashkin and his recently demoted son, former Agriprocessors chief executive officer Sholom Rubashkin — both of whom could face criminal charges in connection with the company's hiring and labor practices — declined to speak on the advice of counsel, said Goldsmith, who described himself as a friend of the family and a liaison to the Postville Jewish community.

"They are trying to be totally transparent" to regulators, he said.

Former state legislator and Postville City Council member Leigh Rekow said he regards the changes as both public relations and an attempt to improve a bad situation.

Fallout from the raid has cost the town's Jewish community much of the goodwill it had gradually earned during the past two decades, Rekow said.

Ouderkirk, the Catholic priest, is skeptical.

"The plant owners keep saying, 'We didn't know the papers were false.' They are complicit in this. They benefit most directly from it," he said.

The company is always making excuses for the mistreatment of its workers, Ouderkirk said.

"It seems like they are in it more for the profit than for the care of their workers." In that sense, he said, the company is not kosher.

Matt Prescott, director of corporate affairs for PETA, which has clashed repeatedly with Agriprocessors since 2004, said the company "is not exactly known for being an upstanding member of the corporate community. Nor is it known for its unwavering sense of right and wrong."

Union take

Of the packing plants that Kevin Williamson has seen in his 31 years as a union organizer and official, Agriprocessors "is at the very bottom" in terms of worker treatment and conditions, he said.

Agriprocessors is a "company town situation," in which the employer owns much of the housing and tries to control workers' lives, said Williamson, international vice president of the 1.3 million-member United Food and Commercial Workers union, which has been trying to organize employees at the Postville plant since 2005.

"Pay is at the bottom rung, with some workers getting just $5 an hour — below the federal minimum wage," he said.

Union officials believe the company used a two-check system to avoid paying some overtime wages and that checks were cashed inside the plant to minimize records of amounts paid, Williamson said.

On Thursday, the Jewish Labor Committee urged Agriprocessors to "end its campaign of worker abuse and respect the rights of employees, including their legal right to union representation." Until it does, the organization said, it will encourage kosher meat consumers to boycott Agriprocessors products.

Goldsmith defended Agriprocessors' labor practices, saying "what many people describe as exploitation is actually opportunity."

Economically disadvantaged people, he said, "get a chance to better themselves through hard work."

'Selective enforcement'

During Tuesday's tour of a clean, modern and odor-free plant gleaming with stainless steel fixtures, workers of many ethnic backgrounds did not seem stressed or harried, and at 3 p.m. the chicken processing line stopped.

"Here is one of the breaks they never get," Goldsmith said.

He attributed the crisis in Postville not to Agriprocessors' hiring of illegal immigrants but to the federal government's enforcement of unjust immigration laws.

"Why all of a sudden did we go from 'don't ask, don't tell,' the country's de facto immigration policy for many years, to singling out one community for all the misery entailed in selective enforcement?" he asked.

Martin, the compliance consultant, said the two highest priorities are ensuring the health and safety of workers and ensuring that workers are in the country legally.

"We're putting a lot of resources into OSHA compliance," he said.

Agriprocessors had already hired a new safety officer in May before it contracted the services of the Prevene Group, Martin said.

The Prevene Group has since hired a former OSHA agent and plans to hire one or two more to work with the safety officer, Martin said.

Agriprocessors also has retained the Des Moines-based Jacobson Group to hire its employees and to ensure they are in the country legally.

Martin said the Prevene Group has hired a former Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent to monitor the Jacobson Group's work.

"All the documents are photocopied for his review." Martin said.

A key component in improving worker welfare and morale, he said, is the establishment of an anonymous tip line that takes complaints seriously and addresses them without retribution.

As for food safety, "there have not been as many allegations in that area, and we are satisfied that the USDA has several inspectors there all the time," Martin said.

Checking papers
Electronic verification procedures used to ensure that workers are not in the country illegally have been 100 percent effective, according to Ryan Regenold, a business development manager for Des Moines-based Jacobson Companies, retained after the raid by Agriprocessors to recruit and hire replacements for the hundreds of workers either arrested or scared away.

"With e-verification, 99 percent of those who know they are illegal don't even apply," he said.

President Bush signed an executive order June 9 requiring all federal government contractors to use the federal E-Verify system to ensure that their employees are authorized to work in the United States. E-Verify, a free and voluntary program, allows employers to check employee names and Social Security numbers against federal immigration and Social Security databases.

"The system is good at keeping illegal workers out of the workplace," said Stewart Baker, assistant secretary for policy of the Department of Homeland Security, which developed and operates the system.

In order to prevent workers from stealing names and Social Security numbers of legal workers, the department is putting photos online so employers can see the photo that should be on the ID the worker presents, Baker said.

Wage increase
Regenold said Agriprocessors had to increase its starting wage for general laborers to $10 per hour to compete for legal workers and to tempt workers to come to Postville.

"We went in there and kicked around dollar amounts. We really pushed for the $10-an-hour pay start," Regenold said.

The company is paying up to $18 an hour for skilled workers, he said.

Agriprocessors' long-term goal is to get back to about 1,000 employees, Regenold said.

"In six weeks, we are almost back to running at 50 percent of the goal," he said.

The company is "in a better place" since the Jacobson Group's screening has begun confirming that "people coming into the plant are legal to be working in America," he said.

The plant's safety record is not as dismal as critics assert, according to Engelmayer.

"In 20 years of operation, we have had fewer than 20 amputations, which includes some involving no more than the tip of a finger," he said.

Engelmayer acknowledged that the Rubashkins have at times seemed slow to comply with government regulations.

"They have had an attitude like that, and it is obviously going to have to change," he said.

Engelmayer attributed it to "an old-world mentality" that values privacy and self-reliance.

"It's more a lack of trust and knowledge than a desire to hurt anyone," he said.

Well it seems as though the enforcement of immigration laws work great for everyone. Well except the employer,since their profits will be down.

Even for the "ILLEGAL ALIENS". They do not have to work in an environment that is unsafe. Hopefully a free trip back to their own country!

Real American employees get a fair wage and good standards of safety.
The town gets a working plant for putting their citizens to work and able to pay bills and maybe even buy a little more. Not to mention pay taxes!

And another plant using the E-verify program to guard against hiring ILLEGAL ALIENS.

Just watch Agriprocessors charge comsumers more for their products, and perhaps a bit more for the value of their "valiant" compliance with the laws.

Originally Posted by vortex

Just watch Agriprocessors charge comsumers more for their products, and perhaps a bit more for the value of their "valiant" compliance with the laws.

I'd gladly pay a bit more!