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Unskilled Labor

Agriprocessors brings homeless from Texas
to keep Iowa plant open.

Ben Harris

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

New York

I

n an effort to restore production at
its Iowa plant, the country's largest
kosher meat producer has been
hiring workers from homeless shelters
in Texas to replace employees detained
in an immigration raid last month.
According to an Agriprocessors
spokesman, workers are recruited by a
firm in Amarillo, Texas, and sent by bus
to Postville. In Iowa, they are processed
by Jacobson Staffing, a Des Moines-
based company that screens them for
drugs and alcohol, and ensures they are
legal to work in the U.S.
Several Postville officials say the new
arrivals have created problems for the
town. Police Chief Michael Halse said
his officers arrested four plant workers
for disorderly conduct last week.
The Rev. Paul Ouderkirk, the leader
of the local Catholic church, which has
played a key role in helping former work-
ers and their families after last month's
raid, said a mentally challenged woman
from Texas had come to his church seek-
ing help with prescription medications.
The woman, Diana Morris, in an
interview with Postville's local radio sta-
tion, said she spent three days on a bus
from Amarillo only to discover that she
was expected to live with 10 men in a
four-bedroom house that had no elec-

tricity or hot water.
"Amarillo's homeless problem has
become Postville's homeless problem:'
said Jeff Abbas, who runs the KPVL
radio station.
The newly hired compliance officer
for Agriprocessors said any allega-
tions that contractors had misled new
recruits would be investigated. "We
would note that we do not believe that
homeless people should be prohibited
from applying for employment from
Agriprocessors," Jim Martin said. "In
fact, for the appropriate individuals, we
welcome the opportunity to offer them
the chance to better their lives:'
Agriprocessors has been struggling
to restore production since authori-
ties conducted the largest immigration
raid in U.S. history May 12 at the plant.
Nearly half the workforce was rounded
up. Some 300 workers are now facing
deportation, having pleaded guilty to
identity theft and fraud.
The company's difficulty in restoring
its normal production levels has sparked
concerns of a kosher meat shortage
around the country. Within weeks of
the raid, a Waterloo staffing company
withdrew an estimated 150 replacement
workers from the plant, citing safety
concerns. A group of Native Americans
brought in from a smaller Agriprocessors
plant in Gordon, Neb., left within days,
saying working conditions were worse
than expected and the company hadn't
made good on its promises.

Those reports have helped prompt
several Jewish organizations to call for
a boycott. But Rabbi Seth Mandel, the
rabbinic coordinator for the Orthodox
Union, one of two agencies certifying
the plant as kosher, says Agriprocessors
merely is responding to the dictates of
the market. "Most consumers will not
pay a premium for free-range, natural
or organic beef, no matter how much
lip service they pay to the idea;' Mandel
wrote in an e-mail. "The same thing
holds true regarding employees and their
working conditions. Meat packers would
[have] no problem with paying higher
wages and make working conditions bet-
ter — if the consumers would pay the
premium price thereby entailed."
In her interview with the radio sta-
tion, Morris described how she was
recruited from Amarillo with about
15 others and given a Greyhound bus
ticket and $15 to pay for food during
the 1,000-mile journey. She said she was
promised 30 days of free housing as well
as a $100 bonus upon arrival.
What made the offer so attractive,
Morris said, was the $10 per hour being
offered. "Everything [in Texas] is about
$6 — the minimum wage she said.
Juda Engelmayer, an Agriprocessors
spokesman, said that resources were
provided to transport workers back to
their homes if they weren't offered jobs.
"They are given the opportunity and
the means to go back where they came
from:' Engelmayer said.

❑

JDC Cuts Staff, Aid Programs

New York/JTA — The American Jewish
Joint Distribution Committee is cutting
programming and is laying off 60 staffers
in its overseas and New York offices.
The JDC said it already has had to cut
aid to 25,000 people in the former Soviet
Union (FSU) and would need to elimi-
nate some programs, but declined to say
which ones.
Executive Vice President Steven
Schwager said the organization will cut
eight staffers in New York and 52 in Israel
and other countries. Schwager said the
cuts, which have been discussed inter-
nally for three months, became necessary
because the falling dollar has left the
organization with an estimated $60 mil-
lion budget shortfall.
"Between the weak dollar and infla-

tion, we have lost about 20 percent of the
purchasing power of our money around
the world and we have started to make
serious programmatic cuts to get back to
our program budget:' he said.
The cuts come as nonprofits around
the world feel the hit of the falling dol-
lar and the economic slowdown in the
United States. Both have created a greater
need for dollars from nonprofits that
raise money in the U.S. and do their
work abroad, and forced many donors to
tighten their philanthropic wallets.
The JDC, which with the Jewish
Agency for Israel is the overseas partner
of the North American Jewish federation
system, became concerned at the begin-
ning of the year when the dollar started
its drastic drop. The JDC instituted a

hiring freeze in March to try to stave off
staff reductions. But Schwager said the
cuts became a reality in recent weeks
when it became clear that the organiza-
tion would not quickly be able to find
donors to make up the shortfall.
"The simple math of the thing is that
if you take an Israeli employee that we
pay 300,000 shekels, last year that cost us
$71,000 per year. This year that employee
working the same hours at the same sal-
ary cost us $90,000:' he said. "We can't
afford that."
The JDC receives $87 million of its
$325 million budget from a set pool of
money the United Jewish Communities
collects from local Jewish federations in
North America. The rest, comes mainly
from individual donors. ❑

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v

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Jo Strausz Rosen, Director
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30230 Orchard Lake Road, Suite 155
Farmington Hills, MI 48334

www.ats.org I

248.737.1990

1400360

June 26 • 2008

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