The new year is approaching, and two stories this week suggest we are turning a corner on the Agriprocessors saga.
According to the Forward, the company’s new owners, led by Montreal businessman Heshey Friedman, have taken over operations of the plant and have already run afoul of several community groups and Jewish organizations.
"I’m quickly starting to become impatient with the company’s lax attitude toward civic responsibilities,” said Jeff Reinhardt, a member of Postville’s City Council.
Reinhardt and other local leaders expressed concern with the continuing involvement of Rubashkin family members in the company, and with the handling of new employees coming into the town. But the biggest concern has been the new owners’ refusal to meet with many community leaders and activists from both inside and outside Postville who have expressed an interest in being briefed on the company’s plans. “At this point in time, it would be very helpful for them to do something different than the old owners — to actually come in and have a meeting with members of the community,” said Steve Brackett, the pastor at St. Paul Lutheran Church in Postville. “I think they are very busy, but I also think it would go far to calming tensions if they would at least host a community meeting.”
A lawyer for the company says they owners have been too busy getting the business off the ground to sit down and chat.
The United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which labored for years to organize workers at the plant, has complained too that the company has not responded to requests for a meeting. As have liberal Jewish groups from outside Postville, who objected to what they claim as the company’s mischaracterization of their agenda. Even Aaron Goldsmith, a leader of the Iowa town’s Jewish community, said getting the company to support local Jewish infrastructure as the previous owners, the Rubashkin family, did, has proven to be a challenge.
“The Rubashkins ran their business like it was a communal foundation — and they supported the Jewish school and the synagogue here completely,” Goldsmith said. The new owners, Goldsmith said, “have made some minimal support of the school, but it was a very big challenge to get them to do even that. One of the concerns is that they are not stepping into the Rubashkins’ shoes — they are creating a different kind of business.”
Meanwhile, the Conservative movement’s Hekhsher Tzedek initiative took a big step forward this week. The initiative, begun in reaction to reports of worker mistreatment at the Postville plant, released detailed guidelines for food producers hoping to earn its Magen Tzedek, or seal of justice.
The Forward reports:
The guidelines for the new Magen Tzedek food certification are intended to ensure that ethical standards are adhered to in kosher food production, and they delve into nearly every phase of the production process. A group of Conservative rabbis began developing the certification more than two years ago after a Forward article drew attention to the poor working conditions at what was then the world’s largest kosher slaughterhouse, Agriprocessors, in Postville, Iowa.
The Hekhsher Tzedek commission, which created the guidelines with the backing of the national bodies of Conservative Judaism, has previously released rough sketches of what the certification would encompass. But the rules released this week go on for 175 pages and delve into great detail on the standards companies will need to meet if they want to earn a Magen Tzedek certification. (Hekhsher Tzedek means certification of justice in Hebrew, while Magen Tzedek means seal of justice.) Those standards broadly break down into five areas: treatment of employees, animal welfare, consumer issues, corporate integrity and environmental impact.
Among the specific rules laid out in the draft is one stipulating that a company would have to pay its lowest paid employee at least 115% of the federal minimum wage (currently $7.25 an hour) and provide the same employee with health and other benefits that amount to at least 35% of his or her wages.
These standards, and many others, would apply to workers who produce any ingredient that is at least 5% of the weight of the final product.
There are a number of certification programs that look at one or another of the specific categories that the Magen Tzedek is interested in — but industry experts say that there are almost no other food-certification systems that are as comprehensive and thorough as what the Conservative rabbis are proposing.
“The breadth is impressive,” said Scott Exo, director of the Food Alliance, which bills itself as the “most comprehensive third-party certification for the production, processing, and distribution of sustainable food."
