Postvile, IA – The flame under this ethnic melting pot is flickering.
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As production falls at the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant, the immigrants who came to work there are hitting the road.
The plant has not processed beef in about two weeks, and shifts in the chicken and turkey departments have been cut back to eight hours a day.
All but about 25 of the nearly 200 workers from the island nation of Palau had left town as of yesterday, said Joanne Obak, 29, of Koror, Palau.
“It’s because a lot have been laid off in the beef kill and because those who still have jobs can’t make it on eight hours a day,” she said.
Most of the remaining Palauan workers “are not doing well” and will be leaving soon, said Obak, who herself plans to leave town Saturday. “I came for a job, but it’s time to move on,” she said.
Agriprocessors spokesman Chaim Abrahams said yesterday that the company has about 200 employees spread across all departments — down from about 900 before the May 12 immigration raid that started the company’s downward spiral. The company is not hiring except to replace key personnel, he said.
Abrahams said the company is working with the court, attorneys and investors to restructure after filing for protection from creditors under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy law.
“We’re working hard to put it together, and we’re moving forward,” he said.
Besides its more than $50 million in debt, Agriprocessors’ former CEO, Sholom Rubashkin, was recently charged with conspiring to hire illegal immigrants, and the company was fined nearly $10 million for state labor violations. It also faces more than 9,000 counts of child labor law violations.
“I don’t see any way they can continue to operate much longer,” said Jeff Abbas, manager of KPVL, the local radio station.
Abbas said buses arrived yesterday to take away the last of the Agriprocessors workers hired by Jacobson Staffing and One Force Staffing, firms retained by Agriprocessors to recruit workers.
With the social and economic dislocation that has occurred since the raid, “this town is far worse off now than when Agriprocessors came to town” more than 20 years ago, Abbas said.
Postville Mayor Robert Penrod said he has no special insights into Agriprocessors’ future in the town. Penrod acknowledged that retail sales have declined with the exodus of workers but said that could be attributed in part to the general economic downturn.
“Everybody is hoping that new management can turn the company around in a hurry,” Penrod said.
One of the town’s leading residential rental companies, GAL Investments, has about 100 vacancies among its approximately 150 residential rental units in Postville, according to company bookkeeper Nina Taylor.
The company lost 12 renters since Tuesday, Taylor said yesterday.
“Compared with what it was before the raid, Postville is almost a ghost town,” she said.
Alliant Energy will not cut off power to 330 Postville-area customers behind in their payments until at least next week, company spokesman Ryan Stensland said. Many of the customers are financially troubled employees or former employees of Agriprocessors.
Stensland said Alliant agreed Tuesday to a request by the Iowa Utilities Board to suspend disconnections in Postville for one week. The company will revisit the decision next week, he said.
Stensland said Alliant has about 2,000 customers in Postville.
Nebach,very sad for everybody involved the workers the owners
How did a company that made so much money fall apart so fast it most be something behind this
So now all you anti-Agri are really happy now. Oh wait…not until the Rubashkins go to jail. THEN you can congratulate yourselves on being right & self-righteous.
Good job, fellas! Oh, & I bet you all voted Democrat for the poor, downtrodden workers. And look what happened to all these workers.
It is a lesson to all of us.
Many times in my business I have opportunities to make “easier” money outside the law, or doing things “not quite right.” But I think of the mistakes AGRI made, and the consequences to their behavior, and it keep me in line.
Maybe it is a good lesson to all of us in business to not use the excuse, “Business is Business” … and get out there and do the right thing, the moral thing, and the halachadik thing, without cutting corners.
Previous posts here keep talking about how many Yidden break some of of those same immigration laws, or other things like that. Maybe that is why Hashem had to bring down AGRI, as a lesson to all of us.
Maybe we should have been so completely outraged by their behavior that we protested, and forced AGRI to do the right thing. Instead, we gave them hetering, we made excuses for them, we wallowed in denial, and we said what they were doing was not so bag. Then we tried to excuse their bad behavior by blaming others, like unions, PETA and others.
Bottom line. We need to all learn to keep our own businesses in the straight and yashar. Don’t borrow money you can’t pay. Don’t hire underage employees. Don’t rip off employees. Don’t intimitate people. Don’t mistreat people. Don’t mistreat competitors. Don’t say, “Business is Business”
In other words, live a “L’chatchila life” instead of looking for loopholes and hetering. Make a kiddush Hashem in all our actions, instead of a chillul Hashem..
Sure, all this problem with AGRI is hurting all or us, but let’s use this as a lesson to ME and to YOU and to US ALL. Let’s go out and do the right thing.
for all u Rubashkin haters the time has finally arived,but now u will see what Rubashkin realymeant for the whole klal yisroel (even though u dont eat it) all prices of meat will be shooting up chasenes wll be much more expensive all restarants will closing shop becuase noone will pay for a steak $100 -$120 .so next time b4 u hate someone for no good reason u shoud think twice what could be the outcome!!!!!!
Yiyasher Kochecha!
A real Ma’amin!
It is a lesson to all of us.
Many times in my business I have opportunities to make “easier” money outside the law, or doing things “not quite right.” But I think of the mistakes AGRI made, and the consequences to their behavior, and it keep me in line. u sound like a big dummy who makes $600 a week ($650 if u work over time)
What i do understand is that on a personal level we all have to help this family What i don’t understand is why is it the right thing to back one of the biggest chillul Hashems in modern history in a public way? And secondly what does higher meat prices have to do with whats right and wrong nobody ever said that doing the right thing is easy even if it means we go broke.
You all have good points, but i believe you’re all missing the main point.
Rubashkin like every business takes risks and hopes to get a reward from it.
The risk here is hiring illeagals they were fined, and employees carted away like the cattle they kill, the risk just didn’t pay out!
The problem is that they bet the whole farm on this one idea, if they would have had 50% or 25% illeagal employees they wouldn’t be so bad off.
Should we feel bad? why not? will it hurt us? yes of course.
Is it a sad day for the us that unemployment is so high and the good old USA threw 900 jobs away?
But the point to remember is that the company took a risk or gamble and lost!
In the USA in 2008 BUSINESS IS BUSINESS. If everyone would be following the straight line there would (bderech Hateva) not be the financial meltdown we have now.
Think of all the Fortune 500 companies who are now in chapter 11, not because they hired illegals, but they cooked the books, and stole the money from the average Joe. Bigger companies than Agri have ripped the average Americans of there hard earned savings whole the CEOs lived the good life. Nobody at Agri lived like the heads of all these corporations that went downhill.
And if you really want to start condemning companies about illegal workers and not paying overtime, underage workers etc… Try taking down Wal Mart. But Wal Mart is still strong because the Gvt knows that if it starts up with them, More of the US will become ghost towns.
Hey. as with all things, there’s always some horse around amongst all the smelly piles of #$%^. So –
Imagine the partying going on in the cow sheds.
Months ago hundreds of big behemos were killed every day so the humans could have their steaks, barbeques, boy-gers around the world. Now a company that was doing this has stopped and is focusing only on the birds.
There’s music and dancing and alot of mooing in them sheds.
Meat prices should not be raised higher becuase of this. You have to stand up and fight that. Maybe all jewish people should go Veggie eating for a while till they realize that they should not raise the price. Boycott to make sure they dont raise prices. You know, veggie chulent taste the same after all the zach that is put in on it.
There is a lot of ignorance in your comments. Surely a family should not be running a $500 million company like a butcher shop in Boro Park. This is the ultimate result of lack of professionalism. There will not be a lack of meat for long. At Kosherfest there were at least 5 new companies getting into Shechita of gassot. Meal Mart is not the only game in town and actually has no meat to sell either, so why raise prices.
Where is the government bailout? I think Rubashkis should go to feds for bailout money. Agri to kosher consumers is much more valuable than GM to US consumers.
A TRAGEDY AND A TRAVESTY.–A HIT JOB!
NEBACH THIS IS SO SAD THE JEWISH COMMUNITY SHOULD RAISE FUNDS FOR THIS
they would be still in business had they run their business with yosher, except they wanted aufessen the whole meat business. How much meat does one have to eat. They prepared their own downfall. Where does Barak Obama have anything to do with crooked yidishe business
I hope that the union organizers who put P.E.T.A.up to this are happy. May they all rot.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (and not Humans)….
Why is Tyson Foods not raided too?
To “sleepy” #4
it’s totally ridiculous to blame obama for this.
The biggest loss of this is to the yidden in small communities around the USA who had agri meat & chicken available in their local supermarkets. Many of these people are marginally observant and not having kosher meat easily available could send them back R”L to eating treyfus. The narrowmindedness of the conservative “rabbis” who attacked agri is unbelievable. It is their congregrants who will revert to mcdonalds when kosher meat is not readily available.
its time to goto the local slaughter houses with ur shochet and shecht whatever u like and for real cheap. on new utricht ave cr 62 st there is a shop like that and the owner tells me that alot of rabbis come here . he has chicens ducks doves turkeys even goats and sheep and he told me that he can get even cows!!! so if u r really despret u can allways help yourself to good quality meat