THE LATEST POST FROM POSTVILLE

Will we ever know the whole truth about what goes on in the Postville plant? Charges and counter charges are flying around.

This week’s KOSHER TODAY has an article that is worth reading. It seems as if the union, the crazies at PETA, the workers at the plant and just about everybody else has a story. Read carefully between the lines and ask yourself the tough questions. A good deal of confusion seems to center on one question: Did the workers turn down the union because work conditions and pay (interesting that the one thing the Rubashkins have not defended is their pay scale which seems to be lower than anyone else’s) were so good, as managemant claims? Or did they turn down the union due to pressure from the company, as labor claims?

Well, here is some more material:

AgriProcessor Fights Back vs. Latest Charges
(Postville, Iowa) AgriProcessor one of the nation’s largest purveyors of glatt kosher meat, has refuted charges published by the Forward (a secular Jewish weekly) that labor conditions at the plant were a “kosher jungle.” In a full page advertisement in the Forward (June 9, 2006), Sholom Rubashkin, vice president of AgriProcessors, blamed PETA and frustrated labor unions (reject by laborers at Agri) for the latest allegations. Without naming the Forward, the letter by Rubashkin called the allegations “horrific and false.” It invited readers to click onto AgriProcessor’s website for “the real story.” The website includes first-hand reports by Rabbi Asher Zeilingold from St. Paul who visited the plant immediately after the Forward article along with Dr. Carlos Carbonera, a member of the rabbi’s congregation. In a front page article in the Jewish Press (“Hatchet Job on Kosher Meat Company, June 9, 2006), Nathan Lewin, a prominent constitutional attorney who has represented Agri in the past, charged that Nathaniel Popper, the writer of the Forward story, failed basic journalistic ethics. He noted that Popper had previously slanted a fairly favorable USDA report on conditions at the Agri plant (“USDA Slaps Kosher Slaughterhouse”, March 13, 2006). Lewin concluded his article with a slap of his own against the Forward: “Because of Popper’s article, the Forward’s editorial writers dedicated their full editorial column in the same issue (June 9th) to challenging AgriProcessor’s ethics and questioning the kashrus of its meat. An editorial on journalistic ethics would have been more appropriate.”