Iowa meat co. fights unionization at NY warehouse
Labor & Employment
A kosher meatpacking plant in Iowa that was the target of a sweeping immigration raid this year is not the only venue where the plant's owners are locked in a fight over undocumented workers.
Agriprocessors Inc. has gone all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to urge the justices to reconsider their long-held position that workers in the country illegally have a right to join labor unions.
The Supreme Court has yet to decide whether to take the case, but if it does, it could have ramifications for a complicated area of U.S. labor law.
At issue are rules that make it a crime for a company to hire illegal immigrants, yet simultaneously protect those same workers from retaliation for engaging in union activity.
Those intertwined standards came into play at Agriprocessors' small distribution facility on the Brooklyn waterfront in 2005, when a group of about 20 workers voted to join the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.
Agriprocessors fired most of the workers after the vote, saying it had investigated their Social Security numbers and concluded at least 17 were in the country illegally.
The company also refused to accept the unionization vote, arguing that it was invalid because of the workers' immigration status.
The National Labor Relations Board sided with the union and took the company to court. The company ultimately gave the workers $2,500 apiece to settle their retaliation complaints, but the dispute over whether the warehouse is now officially a United Food and Commercial Workers Union shop is still unresolved.
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Grounds for Divorce in Ohio - Sylkatis Law, LLC
A divorce in Ohio is filed when there is typically “fault” by one of the parties and party not at “fault” seeks to end the marriage. A court in Ohio may grant a divorce for the following reasons:
• Willful absence of the adverse party for one year
• Adultery
• Extreme cruelty
• Fraudulent contract
• Any gross neglect of duty
• Habitual drunkenness
• Imprisonment in a correctional institution at the time of filing the complaint
• Procurement of a divorce outside this state by the other party
Additionally, there are two “no-fault” basis for which a court may grant a divorce:
• When the parties have, without interruption for one year, lived separate and apart without cohabitation
• Incompatibility, unless denied by either party
However, whether or not the the court grants the divorce for “fault” or not, in Ohio the party not at “fault” will not get a bigger slice of the marital property.