Our New Anahuac

The historic United Farm Workers, organizing home to Cesar Chavez, has launched a new campaign targeting Giumarra, the world’s largest table grape company.  The company employs over 3500 pickers, and it picks one out of every ten bunches of grapes picked in the US. Still the company does not have a union contract with its workers.  What’s worse is that abuses seem to be rampant at Giumarra.

Giumarra worker Oswaldo Luna says, “The most unjust thing I have seen in the company is that they punish us by stopping us from working, for an hour or for days …The supervisor yells at us instead of talking to us. If someone responds to him, he stops them from working.

“The supervisor Rambo began to look for things to punish us on and reasons to send us home? He stopped us for 3 hours without pay that day just because he got mad we answered him back. He told us he did not want to see us and sent us home for the day.” Oswaldo feels that the supervisor is “hoping that if he sends us home enough times, we will get fed up and leave the job.”

Farm worker Monica Martinez,who has worked at Giumarra for the last ten years, tells the story:

“The equipment–gloves and scissors for grapes and other items–we must buy ourselves without any type of reimbursement or compensation [which is illegal]. In 2005, after the election, they gave us the equipment for a while and then they stopped. Now they only give it when they want to. There are times when we need gloves and no one provides them. Making us work without gloves ruins our hands.”

In this new campaign, which they kicked off in September of this year, they are targeting Wal Mart, perhaps the biggest retailer of Giumarra’s grapes. If the union can convince Wal Mart to see the light, they will have the clout to convince Giomarrato change their ways.  This is a classic tactic for the union and they need your help.  Giumarra might not listen to consumers, but Wal Mart just might.  Giumarra will be forced to listen to Wal Mart or they will risk losing one of their biggest retailers.

On October 16, the UFW took action:

15-to-20 UFW and other labor rights groups gathered at Giumarra headquarters Friday in Edison to hand-deliver the worker’s rights petition

Nature’s Partner is the label that Giumarra uses to sell their grapes, and when I asked the union what the one thing that anyone in the country can do to help their cause, they responded, “visit the Nature’s Partner websiteand make a comment on how they believe workers should be treated.”  Don’t hesitate to let Wal Mart know of your concerns as well.