Editorial: Let me say this In point of fact Rubashkin might be "guilty as sin" Or "As Pure as virgin snow" But Neither way would I take the "word on the street" from the press... Because we see how they have lynched Israel!
Because the press certainly is no better a barometer of truth than say the 10 M'raglim who reported back in parshat Sh'lach.
Don't convict [or for that matter absolve] by rumor or imnuendo alone
My 2 cents
RRW
4 comments:
Interesting you chose to mention the meraglim.
Their testimony can be divided into two parts: the actual relating of what they saw and their interpretation.
Notes that Yehoshua and Calev never dispute the first part, just the second.
Yes,the press can embellish but several dozen charges later the man stinks quite a bit.
Ironically, I took the time to dig through OSHA's web site and get the facts, and no one on a large Orthodox email list changed their minds one way or the other. It took me significant time, but I thought people would want facts.
I can prove that OSHA hds Agri down as a very dangerous place to work in since years before union involvement through past the court ruling that gave the union victory over the Rubashkins. That the number of days of work missed due to injury (DART rate) was an order of magnitude greater than Iowa's meat industry's average.
And the only people who believed me were those who had already assumed his guilt anyway before any exposure to facts.
I have a feeling that the Rubashkins' and community workers' politicization of the case worked against him. They made divergance from recommended sentencing guidlines a political statement, an appearance of bending the law for other factors. For some odd reason, the guidelines for sentencing bank fraud are far more severe even than for murder. Sholom Rubashkin's sentence was actually toward the shorter end of the range that Judge Reade determined was applicable -- he could have gotten 33 years! But she couldn't ignore recommendation in the climate the Orthodox community created.
-micha
The point was simply to avoid deciding by rumour.
The Rubashkin case was just a mashal not to believe what you hear in the media. It really had nothing to do with the facts of the case. It had to do with maintaining objectivity and not accepting the press or the media as Gospel
I have inside info that Rubashkin was targeted by the Labour Unions for special processing because Rubashkin was against making it a Union Shop
If true, it;s the Catch-22. As a Union shop people would be screaming about high prices. Rubashkin was able to undercut the competition by keeping Labour Costs Down.
Which like the Torah shows us, there is NO pleasing Jews no matter what you do. Can't stand Egypt, Can't stand the desert, can't take the Promised Land No Wonder Moshe never made it across the Jordan
Same here Jews can't stand high quality, can't stand high prices, can't stand fighting Unionization
There is no winning
The m"raglim teaches us this
Shalom
RRW
You inadvertently provided an illustration of what I was saying.
What I said was roughly: I did the research myself and formed an opinion. But it left me frustrated, since everyone just stuck to the opinions they had without the data.
You replied with an appeal to not rely on rumor and media, and therefore we'll never know.
And so, I'm still frustrated since I bothered to do the research, and it didn't push you to ask about results and form an opinion accordingly.
"I have inside info that Rubashkin was targeted by the Labour Unions for special processing because Rubashkin was against making it a Union Shop."
I crunched the government info that shows that Agriprocessors' troubles with safety law began in 1998, years before the union showed interest, and got worse in 2008, after the union won the right in court to take over the labor force without Agri approval.
From 1998 to 2008, Empire got Iowa OSHA attention for serious and willful violations (doing things they knew could maim an employee) during the course of three years, Hormaell in 5, Swift in 5, and Agri has OSHA violation in 7 of those 10. Total fines for such violations during that decade were $149.5k, compared for $41k to $54k for the other three firms. And again, the pattern doesn't begin in 2005.
They paid 58% of those fines after negotiation, the other firms averaged 62%. Not consistent with accusations of a gov't vendetta -- they were on the better side of the usual ballpark when it came to negotiating the fines down.
So, it's not a gov't nor a union conspiracy, and they consistently were significantly more dangerous than the norms (roughly 3x). That's what the numbers show. Not media hype.
If you want, I can look up the DART numbers when I get home, but they tell a similar story.
As for cutting costs, it wasn't only because of a lack of union salary or even minimum wage. It was also by refusing to pay overtime, by making employees pay for their own safety equipment (which is illegal), and by never shutting down the equipment even during cleaning.
Pay was so low that for incoming employees company housing (a mattress on the floor in a shared room, bathroom down the hall) generally took up their entire paycheck. That's right -- handouts to be relied upon for food and medicine.
-micha
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