$2025 per month for a broken down house in Postville, Iowa – a house without hot water, with a broken bathroom, and with no furniture, rented to students from Kyrgyzstan in the Former Soviet Union who came to work at Agriprocessors.
One of them, Kaliman Bayalieva, read yesterday's post (and the comments to it) dealing with their mistreatment and wrote us a note to clarify her position:
This is Kaliman Bayalieva. The friend of mine happened to send me this article by email. And i would like to respond to some of your comments myself.
First of all i want to make clear that my work at Agriprocessors was voluntary, and i am well aware that it was my own choice to stay there and work. I worked at Agriprocessors to prove my parents that i can be independent and earn my own money without them always supervising me and supporting me.
Secondly i would like to mention that the house that was rented for 225 each was rented by nine people, so in total its 2025 a month for the house that didn't have hot water for a week, plus the bathroom didn't function properly and the house had nothing at all, and when you come to home after 13 or 15 hours shift all sweaty and smelling like chicken and the bathroom doesn't work believe me that's not very good. But there's one thing that i already mentioned to the interviewer that,when we came to Postville we didn't have money and since we didn't have enough money the rent would be reduced [i.e., deducted] from our next paychecks, and again this was a voluntary decision to live in the house. But it really sucked that we didn't have hot water for a week and the company that provided us with the housing didn't do a lot of things that they have promised.
Respond to "As these students spread the word of their horrible experience, more Jew hatred is created -- the one thing Agri's owners are really good at producing."
This is very important...The purpose of giving the interview was not spreading the Jew hatred, and i'm a well educated person, i'm free of prejudices and stereotypes, i've traveled a lot and my country has a very diverse culture. And being silent about our experience in Iowa doesn't mean that it never happened to us or to other students and workers in Agriprocessors.
Yes Agri is really good at producing, but did you ever wonder if they even had such a simple thing as safety instructions???Our safety instruction was about half an hour in two months that i have spent there. And the job there might be a little bit harmful for your health, so extra safety instructions wouldn't do harm to agriprocessors. Also when Nazgul cut her finger (because nobody bothered to explain her that there were cutting gloves for her safety) she went to the office to get some medical help, and they sent her to the laundry where workers there don't have any medical training.
I'm not saying to close down the Agriprocessors (i don't really care about it), i'm just saying that it could improve it's job by just being a little more attentive to their workers, and be more careful about following the quality standards of producing the meat (because seriously, not many workers care about the quality,just like i didn't).
And the last thing, i think that interviewing students from Central Asia was not a very good decision, and it would be better to interview the people that worked there for longer period, because we just came for couple of months and we left, and we don't care about Agriprocessors anymore, we are back at college, with our friends and family, but there are other people that people should be concerned about.
thank you,
Kaliman Bayalieva