Rufus planner does not register production

My rails app starts the process with rufus-scheduler in the initializer. Here's a truncated version of the initializer code:

# config.logger isn't available here, so we have to grab it from the Rails object
logger = RAILS_DEFAULT_LOGGER

logger.warn(Time.now.to_s + ": Starting Rufus Scheduler")

# run every Wednesday at 10 AM 
cron_string = '0 10 * * 3'

scheduler = Rufus::Scheduler.start_new
scheduler.cron cron_string do
  logger.warn(Time.now.to_s + ": Starting Background Process")
  (do work here)
  logger.warn(Time.now.to_s + ": Finished Background Process")
end

logger.warn(Time.now.to_s + ": Rufus Scheduler set Background Process to run with the following cron string: [#{cron_string}]")

In all environments, the code works like a champion. The settlement process does its thing and finishes gracefully. The problem, however, is with logging. When RAILS_ENV is set to "production", messages inside the cron block are not logged at all.

I am using Passenger 2.2.9 and Rails 2.3.5. I believe that one of these two things interferes with the registration protocol. Can someone tell me what it is and how to get it to log in?