Your Glatt Kosher Meat: Agri Star Workers So Poorly Paid, Many Rely On Food Shelf, Locals Say, As Chabad Synagogue Is Condemned By Town

The town of Postville condemned the Chabad-haredi synagogue, which is a former single family house, because it is in such disrepair it is unsafe to occupy. The Chabad boys school was condemned for the same reason, as well.

File photo: Hershey Friedman at Agri Star

Agri Star Workers So Poorly Paid, Many Rely On Food Shelf, Locals Say, As Chabad Synagogue Is Condemned By Town
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com

All is not well in the tiny northeast Iowa town of Postville.

The town condemned the Chabad-haredi synagogue, which is a former single family house, because it is in such disrepair it is unsafe to occupy. The building is, I’m told, still allegedly owned by Sholom Rubashkin, the former Agriprocessors VP serving a 27-year sentence for bank fraud and related crimes.

The city previously condemned the boys yeshiva for the same reasons. It is now using a different building while the original building sits in disrepair.

The Chabad-haredi community wants to use another single family house as its synagogue but the town is opposed to this because of the rampant upkeep issues and code violations in the Chabad-haredi community’s public buildings and in many of the private homes owned by Chabad and haredi employees of Agri Star, the glatt kosher meat producer corporate successor to Agriprocessors located in the town.

Agri Star is allegedly every bit as dishonest in its business dealings as Agriprocessors was, causing local suppliers and other local businesses to fear doing business with it.

Agri Star pays its line workers poorly – although somewhat better than Agriprocessors did if you do not adjust the wages for inflation. At he same time, the price of cattle has gone up, and that has hurt Agri Star's output and restricted its operating hours somewhat. MThat toxic combination has forced many of the line employees to rely on the local food shelf to survive. This includes the many Somali workers who came to Postville to replace the undocmented workers from Guatemala and Mexico Agriprocessors had relied on.

A local non-Jewish landlord was caught renting single family homes as boarding houses, charging Somali workers from Agri Star as much as $600 each per month to sleep in a single family home with as many as a dozen other workers. The town blocked that landlord from buying more property.

Some Chabad and haredi residents who came to work at Agri Star for a relatively brief amount of time or who quickly became disenchanted with the job and the company, allegedly purchased houses, lived in them for six months to two years, often failed to maintain the houses and then abandoned them, returning to Israel or New York and leaving their mortgage holders with a defaulted loan and a decrepit property.

Allegedly presiding over the day-to-day operation of Agri Star are Chaim Abrams and Heshy Rubashkin, two members of the Rubashkin family who, according to the agreement with the US Attorney that allowed the sale of Agriprocessors to Hershey Friedman’s SHF Industries, should not be running the plant. (The official head of the plant is Mike Lande, but he is allegedly a figurehead.)

Hershey Friedman almost never comes to Postville any more but does give (either personally or through the company) about $10,000 per month to help support the Chabad school.

Many locals are angered as they watch their town fall apart again, slower than after the May 2008 immigration raid at Agriprocessors but still a visible, preventable decline.

The city council will decide tonight at its 7:30 meeting if the synagogue will be allowed to convert another single family home to replace the condemned, allegedly Rubashkin-owned, structure.

The price of your glatt kosher meat is still far higher than the actual sticker price in the store reflects, and that price differential continues to be paid by poor immigrant workers and the residents of Postville.

Comments

[Ya'akov]

I don't know if the meat is kosher but the management is treif.

There's a reason the pig is such a signal example of a non-kosher animal. You can't tell from the outside that it isn't kosher, you have to know what is on the inside.

The people of Postville have suffered enough from this nonsense. I hope they find a way to drive the plant from town and survive the outcome.

[dh]

Chabad is a plague in and of itself.

[percherondad]

So interesting that just prior to Pesach we come upon yet another plague. Not boils, or locusts, or blood, but people with no common sense, people indifferent to their surroundings, people who use things up cheat, and lie, and ignore civil law. When did this become the face of Judiasm. I used to be proud to be a Jew. I used to think we were an ethical people, but daily this site make me understand the true nature of this kind of cultish religion that encourages people to NOT think for themselves; to NOT use their God given brains,to follow instead of lead. This is a said day for Judiasm. The days of articles about Rabbis gone bad buried on page six of the newspaper are over. Everything these unethical people do is in an instant all over the internet. There is no longer a buffer between the perpetrator of crime and the people. The information is spread and shared almost before the crime has been completed. This will be our downfall unless Jews with clear heads who learned their ethics from their ethical parents stand up and say "this doesn't represent me" I pay my taxes, I support public education, I support the safety of children (even though the Torah doesn't seem to have any laws regarding children and how they should be treated. ),I am a good citizen. I can't say that for the "Ultra Orthadox" community. Let me be the first to say this doesn't represent me. ... Pass it on.

[bendinai]

@ Ya'akov. Your post makes no sense. for all it's moral failings, that plant provides jobs that were not there prior to Rubashkin's purchase. No non-kosher manufacturer is going to step in. There will simply be more people out of work.

[Ya'akov]

bendinani:

Postville existed as a town before the plant was refurbished by Rubashkin and there is no reason it could not exist after it is gone.

The story says:

"Agri Star is allegedly every bit as dishonest in its business dealings as Agriprocessors was, causing local suppliers and other local businesses to fear doing business with it."

The workers are imported, the houses they live in are falling apart. How is this helping the town?

There would be some upheaval to be sure, but at some point good people choose the lesser of two evils.

[bendinai]

@ Ya'akov....did I say Postville did not exist? Your moral compass leads you to conclude that the employees of this plant will be better off unemployed, and yes, they will be unemployed or will have to move to find jobs, and those local business will have less business....but that's the better alternative. Why don't you poll them? Not to say that psycho Rubashkin was correct in all that hedid, but his non-documented workers were actually dedicated to building their families lives in Postville; to have been replaced by legal minimum wage transient workers.

[state of disgust]

Postville is a crossroads town sitting at the intersection of two major State roads. There is another large employer in town but the main industry - other then Agristar - are the small businesses that support local farmers: seed suppliers, farm machinery mechanics and sales, a small supermarket, gas stations, insurance and investment brokers, banks, a Dollar General store, etc.
(a large WALMART is about 20 miles away).

Most of these businesses would exist whether Agristar was there or not.

Renting single family residences to multiple non-related Agri workers is an old story. Usually these residences are poorly equipped and poorly maintained.

Experience is a great teacher. No one in town trusts Chaim or Heshy and everyone knows they're running the show.

[Ya'akov]

bendina:

"This includes the many Somali workers who came to Postville to replace the undocmented workers from Guatemala and Mexico Agriprocessors had relied on."

In any case, it is not my place to choose for the people of Postville, but I do think they would be better off without the shadow Rubashkin clan even with a closed plant.

[Shmarya Rosenberg]

bendinai –

You are factually wrong.

These non-Jewish workers are not "transient," they're just poor.

As for idea that no matter how badly Agri Star (or Agriprocessors) treats (or treated) its workers, the town is better off with the plant than without it, even if you are correct – and arguably you are not – that in now way justifies the behavior of Agri Star (or Agriprocessors).

[S M L]

Keep the plant, lose the owners.

[Allamakee Darrel]

I grew up in Postville and my family has been there since the 1930s. The town did not grow because of AgriStar. There were locals here working in the two meat processing plants long before it was purchased for Kosher uses. The owners did not want to pay a fair wage to the natives of the town so they brought in illegals who would. The illegals have brought a pile of problems with them and the natives who could left. Now since the natives were jumping like rats off a burning ship it drove the property values down. These inexpensive properties were snatched up to be used as boarding houses for all the illegals. This destroyed the properties and drove value down even further. Now the natives who have remained have seen the value of their property diminished. Postville did not need Agri Processors or Agri Star. These corrupt pieces of garbage destroyed the town I grew up in and it would be best if they left.

[state of disgust]

Allamakee Darrel:

Actually, real estate prices went up in Postville. There was an article about this in the Demoines Register a few years back. As demand for rental space went up with increasing numbers of Agriprocessors low wage workers, there was a bidding war for available property between a Rubashkin controlled real estate company and two other real estate companies. Prices were driven way above market value. Rubashkin used its position as a large client in local banks to get preferential treatment and low borrowing rates in order to buy property (something never investigated). The DR article referred to this as the Postville Real Estate Bubble.

After the raid, the Postville real estate market completely collapsed, driving prices down, well below market rates and has pretty much remained low ever since.

[postville58]

The meeting of the council lasted about 10 minutes! The 2 Jewish rabbis( I assume they were rabbis) came, could not believe how many people were there, talked with their lawyer, came back and with drew their request! About 30-40 Postvillians were in attendance.

[AGRI-vated Angel]

postville58,
Where is the location of the house the rabbis asked to be allowed to convert into a new synagogue?

[postville58]

AGRI-vated-Angel: I do believe it was on Cheryl Street. My parents went to the meeting!