United’s Public Policy Event Is Important; Future Years’ Scheduling To Be Improved pointed out that a scheduling error was made and, as a result, United’s Washington Public Policy Conference was scheduled over the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah.
We emphasized that the slip-up was inadvertent and that it was important for those able to support the event to do so.
The piece brought this response from United’s CEO:
Thank you for addressing questions in the Pundit about our scheduling the 2007 Washington Public Policy Conference over Rosh Hashanah. As you indicated, I deeply regret this insensitivity in our scheduling of the event, and apologize that we were unable to reschedule the conference when we learned of our error. The WPPC has been held the second week of September for several years now, and it was our mistake to simply schedule it that week again without being sensitive to recognize such an important religious holiday.
We certainly appreciate that many Jewish members may want to be home with their families for the holiday, and we hope they may want to join us again in a future year. For those who might want to travel to Washington, DC, before Rosh Hashanah begins and participate in conference events that do not conflict with the holiday, we are making arrangements with several local synagogues for our guests to be able to join congregations in various denominations for services. Jeff Oberman in our Salinas, California, office has volunteered to assist anyone who might be interested to attend services in the DC area, and he can be reached directly at joberman@unitedfresh.org.
In the end, I do want to apologize again to all those who may have been offended by the conference scheduling. That was certainly not our intent and we will do our very best to learn this important lesson and exercise much more sensitivity in the future. Thank you.
— Tom Stenzel
President and CEO
United Fresh Produce Association
Washington, DC
Enough said. Thanks to Tom for his letter.
