Not an Ideal employer

Posted 8/21/12

Ideal Snacks, which is based in Liberty and had over 450 employees, last week laid off a large number of those employees because of what company officials said were defects in the employees’ I-9 …

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Not an Ideal employer

Posted

Ideal Snacks, which is based in Liberty and had over 450 employees, last week laid off a large number of those employees because of what company officials said were defects in the employees’ I-9 documentation. I-9 forms are used by the federal government to show whether or not residents are legally allowed to hold a job in the United States.

Officials at the company said they were sorry about the layoffs, but they had no choice in the matter. It is hard to believe, however, that the top people in the company did not know they had hired undocumented immigrants from the beginning. In fact, there are people who have said the company preferred to hire undocumented immigrants.

The company has received millions of dollars in tax breaks through the Sullivan County Industrial Development Agency over the years. In 2008, the company also applied to the Sullivan County Legislature to become a “regionally significant project,” which would grant it advantages in the Empire Zone program, which existed at the time.

As part of the process, two public hearings were held. At one of those hearings, a young woman who lived in Liberty told The River Reporter that people born in the area could not get a job at Ideal Snacks because the company was only interested in hiring people who spoke Spanish.

Members of the county legislature at that time went on a tour of the plant, along with a member of the Zone Administration Board (ZAB), who also had to approve of Empire Zone benefits. One of those ZAB board members, the late Eileen Haworth Weil, wrote at the time, “most workers speak only Spanish.”

Ron Hiatt, a legislator at the time, said of his tour experience that it was clear through conversations with employees through interpreters that many did not live in the county before getting a job with Ideal.

Then-county manager David Fanslau asked attorney Henri Shawn, who was representing Ideal Snacks at the time, if the company could accept giving Sullivan County residents preference when hiring new employees. Shawn said the company could not accept that as a condition of being in the program.

An advocate who works with undocumented immigrants said that the employees who were laid off last week had been directed by the company as to where they should purchase their I-9 documentation.

So what has changed? The word among residents in the Village of Liberty and the former employees is that a company—Kellogg’s—recently purchased or became a major investor in Ideal Snacks, and is now requiring that all employee documentation be put in order.

It’s not clear if this is true. The River Reporter emailed Kellogg’s to inquire as to the ownership of Ideal Snacks. Kellogg’s responded and inquired about our deadline, but never answered the question.

A quick search of the Internet revealed that in December 2012, Ideal Snacks assigned several patents to Kellogg’s; the patents were related to the production of “cereal crackers.”

It’s impossible to know exactly how many workers were laid off from Ideal Snacks, the company is not saying and county officials don’t know the answer, although the number is beleived to be about 200. But it is known that most of those who were laid off are not entitled to unemployment payments.

There is no doubt that Ideal Snacks created jobs in a community that wanted them, but there has always been a debate about whether the jobs are the kind that are beneficial to the community. After all, if a company does not provide healthcare, and does not pay enough for the employee to buy his or her own healthcare, society picks up the tab one way or another.

Back in 2008, when the county legislators were debating whether to grant the company its special status for a significant tax break, then-lawmaker Leni Binder said that the jobs without healthcare were better than no jobs at all.

Ted Polinero, who was on the ZAB at the time, said he did not think Ideal Snacks was beneficial to the county, and that because the employees have such low wages, they don’t pay property or school taxes. But the employees were already there. He argued that if the company had moved out at that time due to the legislature’s failure to give it tax breaks, the employees might remain and become “wards of the county.” Based partly on this argument, he and the rest of the legislature went ahead and granted the company its special status.

Now, the company has reaped seven years worth of tax breaks, and more than 100 workers and possibly many more are out on the street with rights to just about nothing. It looks like once again, as has become all too prevalent in our economic system, we have succeeded in privatizing the profits and socializing the costs associated with doing business. Next time a similar decision comes around, perhaps we’ll remember that the quality of jobs can be just as important as the quantity, if we want a solid, long-term improvement in the community’s financial wellbeing.

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