Workers of the world… are screwed in Iowa!

Paul Scott, Cedar Rapids (IA) Gazette:

POSTVILLE — After federal agents arrested more than 300 workers at the Agriprocessors plant in Postville in May, the company needed new employees to handle the slaughtering at the plant.

One of the places recruiters looked for help was the tiny South Pacific nation of Palau.

Palau is one of just three countries in the world — all of them part of a former American protectorate in the South Pacific — where citizens can enter and work in the United States without visas. That’s what made them attractive to Agriprocessors managers.

For the Palauans, the promise of a $9-an-hour wage with a pay raise to $13 an hour after three months was very attractive compared with working in their own country, where wages average $2 an hour. The offer of free housing for three months in Postville and a free round-trip ticket from Palau clinched the deal for about 170 Palauns.

But when they arrived in Postville, the promise of free housing disappeared, as did the promise of a pay raise after three months. A spokesperson for the Palauans said they were not aware of the potential problems at Agriprocessors, but said their recruiter in Palau should have known about them, About 100 of the Palauans left Postville for jobs elsewhere in the United States, but 70 remained in town.

Members of the remaining group were housed in four Postville houses owned by one landlord. On Friday when the water and heat to those houses was shut off and when Agriprocessors did not issue paychecks as scheduled, many of the Palauans had had enough…

The pay raise (and the job… and their heat and light) aren’t the only things to disappear. According to Barth Andrews of “Fair Food Fight“, so has at least one of Agriprocessor’s owners (who seems to have fled the country).

The local Catholic Church, St. Bridget’s, has exhausted its resources trying to provide for the Guatemalan and Mexican immigrants who were arrested, but released into the community and — unable to work — are dependent on the church for their survival. Donations should be made to:

St. Bridget’s Hispanic Fund
P.O. Box 369
Postville, IA 52162

I don’t have an address for the Decorah churches, but will post when I find one, though I’m sure the Catholics in Postville are helping out as much as they can: