Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
I’ve often wondered what possessed Norman Martin to write the song that Scouts love (and Scout leaders don’t) called “The Song that Never Ends.” Considering the continued employment woes at Agriprocessors, the nation’s largest kosher meatpacking plant, perhaps Martin had a psychic vision of the news cycle following the May 12 immigration raid at the plant.
Shortly after the plant lost roughly half of its workforce in the raid, management appealed to workers at their Gordon, Neb. facility to come into Iowa. They came… and quickly left.
Next the plant contracted with the Waterloo-based staffing firm Labor Ready for workers. The staffing firm pulled the workers from the plant 10 days later.
Management outsourced to another staffing firm. That firm, in turn, appealed to other companies for help recruiting workers into the Postville plant. The result was an influx of homeless people from the state of Texas. The southern workers said they came to Postville because of promises made in relation to employment there. When they left Postville, they claimed those same promises were broken.
Yesterday, the Associated Press reported on the recent wave of Somali immigrants that have come to work at Agriprocessors. At nearly the same time as the AP was giving the public a glimpse of the new workers’ hopes and dreams for success in Postville, local journalist Tony Leys wrote an article for the Des Moines Register that, although new, sounds like it could be the next verse, same as the first.
Abdikarim Nur, 19, said he recently quit after working two weeks at Agriprocessors. He said he received no training, and that most of his pay was withheld.
Nur said the recruiting company arranged living quarters, with many men packed into small apartments. The living conditions apparently were the same as those endured by the illegal immigrants who were arrested in May, he said. “They treat us like they used to treat the old people, and that’s not right,” he said.
Perhaps it will take another song to drown out the first.
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