UFCW Corruption and Sholom Rubashkin

What does the recent arrest of three former bosses of the UFCW [United Food and Commercial Workers] on charges of racketeering, extortion and money laundering  have to do with Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin?

The linkage between the two topics was proclaimed in the headline of a local Jewish weekly: Officials of UFCW, Organization That Brought Down Rubashkin, Arrested. The title suggested one would discover from the article a tie-in between the arrest of the UFCW officials and the collapse of Agriprocessors, the Rubashkin family’s meat-packing plant.  

The article, however, made no effort to follow up on this linkage—perhaps assuming the facts are well known and no elaboration was needed.

This is unfortunately far from the case. Too few know about the UFCW’s odious accomplishments in Postville, Iowa; how this powerful union, aided by highly-placed political cronies, destroyed a prosperous Jewish company, drove its owners to financial ruin and crushed an entire economic region.  

How ironic that the powerful union that maligned Agriprocessors “for worker abuse and exploitation” is now mired in disgrace over corruption charges. But this irony is probably lost on a great many readers.

Bizarre News Blackout
The UFCW corruption case is a story that cries out to be told. But penetrating the veils that keep the union’s  tactics from public view is no easy task. The union’s skill in spinning the facts and in keeping the public in the dark is on display in the bizarre news blackout surrounding the October arrest of top union officials.

The article posted by the Jewish weekly was a copy of a report released by the National Legal and Policy Center [NLPC] on the arraignment of the three UFCW chiefs, Anthony Fazio Sr., John Fazio Jr., and Anthony Fazio Jr. on corruption charges.

The information in the article had been lifted from a press release issued by the New York City Courthouse News Service in October, the day the men were arrested.

After appearing in these two sources—Courthouse News Service and NLPC, and of course the indictment itself—the story of the arrests on corruption charges abruptly died in its tracks. Not a single news wire carried it.

The indictment said the union leaders had stolen $2.4 million dollars from their members and from employers over a 16-year period, and used the money to line their own pockets. 

It accused the Fazios of "extorting, soliciting and obtaining cash payments, in violation of federal and state labor law, from business owners whose employees were represented by [the UFCW branch] Local 348," to enrich themselves and others.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in the indictment that "as [union]leaders, the Fazios were supposed to advocate on behalf of their members, not strong-arm and threaten business owners in order to make a profit under the table… They will now be held accountable."

FBI spokeswoman Janice Fedarcyk elaborated on the Fazios’ modus operandi. "The Fazios used their position to pad their pocketbooks by allegedly threatening and extorting businesses for more than 15 years instead of using their position to protect the workers their union represented.” 

These former presidents and treasurer of the UFCW—men who stood at the helm of the organization for decades—were arrested over a month ago. The trio were taken in handcuffs to a precinct in Manhattan, and slapped with a 52-page indictment. High profile arrests of this sort normally make headlines. Not here. The usual media buzz and notoriety accompanying the  arrest and arraignment of prominent figures were totally absent.

Where was the press? Where were the flashing media cameras, and reporters with microphones pushing and shoving to get a statement from the celebrity legal team proclaiming their client’s innocence?

Explosive Story Died In Its Tracks
While major efforts have gone into jacking up the insipid antics of “Occupy Wall Street” to the level of something resembling news, a naturally explosive story has not only been kept off the front pages, but out of the entire mainstream press. 

Incredibly, five weeks later, no information has surfaced in any news organ about the unfolding legal process in the case. There is no place to go to learn more about this significant case.

What does it all mean?  

One’s imagination tends to run riot trying to visualize how such a news blackout was orchestrated.  How about this scenario: A union associate—we’ll call him Tony—places a phone call to “Jim” who has connections in the D.A.’s office, 

Tony: Hey Jim, how’s it going?
Jim:  Pretty good. How can I help you, Tony?
Tony: I need a favor, Jim. About the Fazios. Keep the press out of the picture, okay? We know you boys have to do your job, but no fanfare. Keep it real quiet, okay?
Jim: It’s not so simple, Tony. This is hot. The D.A.’s been working on this for two years. He’s entitled to a little public recognition, you know what I mean?
Tony: We’ll see he gets recognition. We know how to show our appreciation—especially in an election year. You have any doubts on that score?
Jim: No, I guess not.
Tony: Good. So I can count on you, Jim? This is a big one.
Jim: I’ll see what I can do, Tony.

Ridiculous, right? This only happens in novels—bad ones, with contrived and implausible plots that would be laughed out of the editor’s office. 

On the other hand, isn’t truth sometimes stranger than fiction? In this case, the truth is made even stranger by the fact that in addition to the news blackout surrounding the immediate arrests and arraignment, the media silence encompassed all subsequent court hearings related to the case.

What pleas were entered by the accused union bosses? How much was bail set for? Is there going to be a trial? Who are their attorneys? How many years in prison do the men face “if convicted of all charges”? One searches the news outlets in vain for the barest hint.

“How powerful must be the reach of the UFCW—and their many influential friends and beneficiaries,” wrote one columnist. “While the union hierarchy is busy protesting corporate greed and alleged malfeasance, those same protesters are robbing their members blind with impunity, and keeping the public in the dark even about their bosses sitting in the dock.”

Revisiting The UFCW’s Campaign Against Agriprocessors 
Does it really matter how the meat-packing plant and the Rubashkin family were destroyed? As ugly and repellant as the union’s tactics were, why dwell on the past? Why not move on?

The answer is that the lies planted by the UFCW about Sholom Rubashkin in its long-running campaign to unionize Agriprocessors, continue to poison public opinion, and can harm efforts to have the Rubashkin case heard by the United States Supreme Court.

Although the Supreme Court does not decide whether to accept a case based on the popularity or notoriousness of a defendant, public perception of the defendant as a criminal who deserves his fate can certainly influence the high court’s decision. 

Discredited Lies Recycled
Lies peddled by the union—specifically about “illegal labor practices” at Agriprocessors—continue to be served up to an unsuspecting public. They were recycled as recently as last month in an op-ed in the LA Jewish Journal by a Rabbi K. of an LA synagogue identifying itself as modern Orthodox.

The author was writing about the need for higher standards of ethics in the Jewish community and—setting a fine example of ethical behavior, himself—took a sanctimonious jab at Sholom Rubashkin, accusing him of unethical treatment of his workers.

When challenged by a reader comment, Rabbi K. said he was referring to fines levied by the Department of Labor against Agriprocessors for the allegedly withholding workers’ wages.

Were immigrant workers actually cheated out of their pay at Agriprocessors? This is easily determined by examining the state trial record, at which these and many other allegations were aired.

As explained at the trial, most accusations about “shorting pay” arose over differences in “time clocked” and “time worked.” Workers punching the clock before their shift officially began tried to bill the company for extra time they voluntarily put in. This ran counter to company policy that it would not recognize “voluntary” overtime, only overtime that was specifically requested by the company.    

When workers’ paychecks did not reflect the extra time they billed for, outside agitators showed them how to file complaints with the Department of Labor for having their paychecks “shorted.”

The rabbi, responding to criticism from LA Jewish Journal readers for his badmouthing of Sholom Rubashkin, claimed he possessed evidence that Agriprocessors had paid the fines imposed by the Department of Labor, as if that itself was proof of guilt.

This claim is patently false, as anyone familiar with the timeline of events can testify. The fines were levied after the raid had forced Agriprocessors to cease operations and to declare bankruptcy. It was as if Iowa labor commissioner Dave Neil was intent on giving Agriprocessor’s already “dead body” one final kick—just to make sure.

Company representatives contested the fines as unjustified. It goes without saying they were never paid, and weren’t expected to be paid by a company in its death throes. 

But that wasn’t the point. The point was their shock value to those campaigning to demonize Agriprocessors and how these sensational charges might be used as fodder in the state’s child labor case against Sholom Rubashkin.   

From The Moral High Ground - Or The Gutter?
Like a modern-day Rip Van Winkle, Rabbi K. seems to have slept through some major events since news of the fines was used to malign the company.

At Rubashkin’s 2010 state labor trial, an astounding thing happened. The case against the defendant had appeared overwhelming. Labor Commissioner Dave Neil, a man with extensive ties with Iowa’s major unions, had initially charged Agriprocessors with 9311counts of child labor.

On top of this, the judge allowed the prosecution to air many other allegations of “shorting pay,” deliberate hiring of minors, lack of safety training, having minors work with “dangerous chemicals,” and other complaints against the company.

Even before the trial began, 90 percent of the 9311 child labor charges were abruptly dropped. That they had been ridiculously inflated from the start was self-evident. Further embarrassing the prosecution, the number of charges then shrank to just 67. And under a jury’s scrutiny, they fell apart altogether, along with all other allegations.

The trial ended with a jury’s verdict of not guilty on all counts. What about ‘not guilty’ don’t you understand, Rabbi K?

What is even more extraordinary than a rabbi publicly repeating lies about a fellow Jew that have been discredited in court, is the wording of the rabbi’s claim in an email to this writer. He stated not that he had read about or had seen news reports related to the Department of Labor fines that he claims Agriprocessors had paid, but that he has “all these documents” in his possession.

When asked to produce a copy of them for this writer, the rabbi responded with silence.

As improbable as it sounds, suppose Rabbi K’s intimacy with the Rubashkin saga extends so far that he actually does retain documents about an internal Agriprocessors’ matter.  Wouldn’t such a privileged insider surely be informed about the jury’s conclusions at the state trial? How then could he have accused Sholom Rubashkin of charges which were shown to be without foundation?

Whether coming form ignorance or bigotry, the author’s audacity in using a Jewish newspaper to  defame a fellow Jew, in the name of calling for higher ethical standards as a “rav” (as he refers to himself in his byline), is breathtaking.              

Deadly Fallout Of A Union Corporate Campaign
If the lies in the LA Jewish Journal do not seem virulent enough to warrant a post-mortem of the union’s successful campaign in demonizing Agriprocessors, a closer look at the chain of events that led to the destruction of the company offers a more graphic selection of libels. 

How many know that as part of a 2008 UFCW campaign against Agriprocessors, the union phoned religious households across Jewish communities in New York with a Yiddish message questioning Agriprocessors’ kashrus and safety standards?

This tactic, disguised as a public welfare alert, was aimed at maligning the company’s image and eroding its customer base. Once a company loses 10 per cent of its customers, union leader Joe Crump has said, it loses its profitability and faces a slow demise.

Many a company, thrown on the ropes by a union “corporate campaign” of the type waged against Agriprocessors, has been forced to the bargaining table with the union. Such was the union’s game plan against Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin.

Scare Tactics, Misinformation
One of the ways the union covers its tracks is by piling on misinformation. Its strong-arm tactics in forcing a company to unionize comes disguised as a service to the public. The tactics are packaged as a noble effort to alert people to the danger/exploitation/bad practices of a particular company.

The campaign against Agriprocessors actually goes back much further, to 2005, when the UFCW attempted over many months, without success, to unionize the plant in traditional ways, such as enticing workers through promises of higher pay, better medical benefits, and so forth.

Acknowledging the failure of traditional methods, the union shifted gears and launched a “corporate campaign.” This is a strategy described in the union’s own literature to its members as a multi-pronged war of attrition waged against a given corporation, until the company either surrenders to unionization or is forced to shut down.

War of Attrition
In the battle to unionize a plant, a key tool is lodging accusations and complaints against the company for violations of federal regulations. The company is then penalized and fined, with the union parlaying the NC’s (noncompliance citations) to the public as proof of dangerous or unscrupulous  business practices.

The company may be forced to hire public relations consultants to counter the negative publicity, pouring its resources into damage control, often to the neglect of its business.

If the charges are fought in court, the company bleeds financially through formidable legal fees. Either way, the war of attrition eventually exacts a massive toll.

As the Wall Street Journal has noted,  “Unions are using regulatory laws as strategic weapons in their organizing and bargaining battles,” the purpose of which is to “harass a company in the marketplace and blackmail it into voluntarily recognizing unions without a National Labor Relations Board-sponsored election.”

Regulation is so out of control that any businessman in America, at any given time, is almost  certainly guilty of noncompliance with a number of federal regulations. It is beyond human ability to be familiar with the tens of thousands of OSHA, EPA, IRS and other regulations. “The unions realize this—indeed, they lobbied for many of the regulations in the first place,” notes the Wall Street Journal.

Union-Aligned Forward Trashes Agriprocessors
The UFCW’s war of attrition geared up after it witnessed the success of the Forward—a union-aligned newspaper with a pronounced anti-religious agenda—in trashing Agriprocessors in 2006 with a series of libelous articles. 

Building on negative publicity generated by PETA’s prior assaults against the company, the Forward’s articles painted the meat-packing plant as a filthy, dangerous worksite where inhumane treatment of animals and workers abounded.

These outrageous claims should have been easy to counter. The USDA maintained a full-time presence at Agriprocessors. Also on site on a steady basis were top-of-the-line auditors hired by the company to ensure the plant’s high standing in the industry, in terms of cleanliness and safety, remained above average. These specialists were constantly on the alert for any breach of standards.

Praise From Iowa Senators
In addition, the public view of Agriprocessors was extremely favorable. The plant had been visited over the years by many members of Iowa’s political bureaucracy, including Senator Chuck Grassley and Senator Tom Harkin, who publicly praised its operations. Harkin was quoted in the press as saying “Agriprocessors is one of the cleaner nicer operations that I’ve seen in the whole state.”

Perhaps the Rubashkin management felt that a costly public relations counteroffensive was unnecessary because the facts were so self-evident. False allegations would simply fall apart on their own. 

Tragically, this notion proved wrong. The Forward’s mud-slinging, picked up by the mainstream media, began to stick. [Having seen the extraordinary ability of the unions in repressing a scandal, it doesn’t take much of a stretch to imagine their power in creating one.]  

The Forward’s salvo against the meat-packing plant was followed up some months later by a smear campaign waged by a Conservative rabbi from Minnesota, Morris Allen.

Allen had pledged that his visit to Agrprocessors was for the sole purpose of ascertaining whether the Forward’s articles had any truth to them. He had claimed to be free of any union-related agenda. He won an unrestricted private tour of the plant based on these assurances and the recommendation of a trusted friend of Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin, Rabbi Asher Zeilingold of Minnesota.

[In a scathing editorial to a Jewish weekly, Rabbi Zeilingold later lashed out at Allen for building Magen Tzedek “on the blood of a fellow Jew” and for conducting himself with deceit.]

After infiltrating Agriprocessors with labor consultant Avi Lyon [who posed as a friend of Allen who was merely curious about how the kosher plant operated], Allen teamed up clandestinely with union reps in Postville. His collaboration with the union was exposed when their secret meeting was unexpectedly discovered.  

Allen later used his tour of Agriprocessors to launch a new social-justice certification called, “Magen Tzedek.” Although as can be seen from his private correspondence with Sholom Mordechai, he had only praise for the company after his tour, he later reinvented his findings to fuel a smear campaign against Agriprocessors from which he launched his social-justice program. 

He and Avi Lyon would go on to engage in one of the most vicious modern day blood libels. The pair appeared on a documentary, American Greed, as Jewish “insiders” with access to the real truth about Agriprocessors. They pitched the producer’s fantasy to millions of viewers that Sholom Rubashkin was a rapacious corporate villain.

“We tried to keep this matter ‘Jew to Jew,’ Allen piously explains on American Greed, but said he “had no choice but to go public” with his complaints.  

Conservative Leader Launches Smear Campaign
Magen Tzedek became a rallying point for Conservative leaders to galvanize their struggling movement. It also set the stage for Allen’s bid of for a market share in kashrus certification.

Allen pitched his new certification as the remedy to worker exploitation at kosher plants, gaining media limelight while riding the wave of public wrath over the “abuses” he helped to expose at Agriprocessors.  His ambitions served as the perfect foil for stepped-up union activity against the plant.

[Later, the UFCW in conjunction with the Magen Tzedek launched a boycott of Agri products, with several rabbis websites and blogs affiliated with the Conservative movement calling for a full boycott of all Rubashkin products.]

With Agriprocessors greatly weakened by the blows raining down upon it, the UFCW in 2007 formally launched its corporate campaign against Agri processors. 

In addition to sending out an automated message to Jewish homes in the N.Y. area smearing Rubashkin products, pamphlets were distributed at kosher stores, advising customers of “health hazards” in Rubashkin meat and poultry. 

Trader Joe's stores in various locations were picketed, and in the guise of a public service to consumers, a new website was launched to monitor “abuses” at Agriprocessors. 

Campaign Gets Uglier
Picketers distributed pamphlets calling on customers not to buy Trader Joe’s turkey and poultry products because they contained dangerous amounts of sodium.

After being immersed in salt for an hour for kashering purposes, all kosher poultry contain higher amounts of sodium than non-kosher products. Union agitators, however, shrewdly bank on consumer ignorance when employing scare tactics.  

The relentless picketing of Trader Joe's stores culminated in a victory for the union in April 2008, as Trader Joe discontinued business with Agriprocessors. Trader Joe’s at the time was receiving a truckload of Agrprocessors products every single day. The loss of this company’s business struck an irreparable blow. 

Employing similar tactics, the UFCW targeted Local Pride, an Agriprocessors branch in Gordon Nebraska. Here, too, the attacks eroded the company’s credibility, despite public comments by a USDA spokesperson that “Agriprocessors is in full compliance with all health and safety concerns cited against the company over the past 3 years.”

Congressmen Join The Fray
In the same time frame, as the Forward ran a spate of editorials and op-eds attacking Agriprocessors, and as Rabbi Morris Allen stepped up his own smear campaign against the company, four Democratic congressmen stepped into the fray.

The congressmen, all known to enjoy close ties with the unions, wrote a joint letter to the secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture expressing concerns about food safety at the company’s Postville plant and urging and investigation. The well-publicized letter dealt one of the most lethal blows to the company’s image.

[One of the congressmen would later have a change of heart. In 2010, after disclosures about Judge Reade’s ex parte discussions with prosecutors came to light, this congressman would write a searing  letter to Attorney General Eric Holder protesting the severe injustices in the government’s prosecution of Sholom Rubashkin and demanding an investigation].

By mid 2008, aided by Morris Allen’s smear campaign; by a media geared up for a feeding frenzy; powerful friends such as Labor Commissioner Dave Neil; and congressmen hungry for union support in an election year, the union had set the stage for the final knockout blow against Agriprocessors —the infamous ICE raid.