Grape Pickers Crash Lavish Sonoma Winery Banquet Demanding Better Wildfire Protections

On a cool autumn day last in November, tourists streamed into the Simi Winery to immerse themselves in the storied winery’s Harvest Celebration — at $145 for a ticket, a meal, and, of course, wine pairings. As the well-heeled attendees arrived, a group of farmworkers, their families and supporters picketed, chanting and playing drums.

The price tag for the meal, according to North Bay Jobs with Justice, which helped organize the protest, roughly matches what a farmworker gets paid for collecting one ton of grapes.

The protest organizers, led by workers, had been trying to meet with Simi Winery’s owners since September, but the winemakers never replied. No mom and pop shop, Simi Winery is owned by one of the largest alcohol companies in the world, Constellation Brands, a Fortune 500 firm valued at $44 billion that owns Modelo Especial, Corona Extra and other popular brands.

The farmworkers had sought to invite Simi — as well as more than 30 other local wine-related businesses — to commit to meeting five demands tailored to the needs of fire-stricken workers.

The workers are fighting for disaster insurance to cover wage losses when it’s too dangerous to work, as well as hazard pay for high-risk shifts — such as when wineries are granted waivers to allow workers to labor in evacuation zones. The workers also want community safety observers to be allowed into the evacuation zones to assure that safety standards are upheld and for safety information to be distributed in Indigenous languages. Finally, they want clean bathrooms and clean water available even when the fires are burning nearby.

Today, the idyllic Sonoma County experience that visitors flock to is made possible by workers inhaling toxic smoke as fires burn nearby.

Maria Salinas, a Chatino farmworker from the Oaxaca region of Mexico, described what harvest season is like now. “You’re working and you’re smelling the toxic smoke,” she said. “And you don’t want to protect yourself with the masks, because it’s too hot, so you’re breathing all of this. After work, you feel like sneezing and spitting. The saliva is black. If this is just what you’re spitting, how must it be inside? What about your lungs?”

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Видео Grape Pickers Crash Lavish Sonoma Winery Banquet Demanding Better Wildfire Protections канала The Intercept