At the beginning of the month, I passed on the story of Maria Isabel Vazquez’s tragic death due to labor violations on the West Coast Grape Farming Vineyard. Besides passing on the action requests of the UFW and Proyecto Voz, I also made some suggestions of my own about how to help. One of them was to follow the links provided to contact your local Trader Joe’s and ask that they stop stocking Two Buck Chuck, a wine owned by the same company and with a lucrative contract with Trader Joe’s. (read more here)
One of my readers reported that she had gone to her local Trader Joe’s and been told that the manager could not pull products from the shelf without permission from corporate headquarters. I suggested then that people go into their local store with a pre-written post card or short letter explaining why they could not buy Two Buck Chuck so that local store managers would have something to forward on to corporate to prove people were serious and the product needed to be pulled until all of the vineyards owned by Bronco wines complied with state labor laws and protected their workers appropriately.
Since then, UFW has put out a call to do the same. They recently updated that call to let people know that Trader Joe’s corporate office is refusing to pull the wine nor educate their consumers about the relationship between Bronco wine and Maria’s death. Trader Joe’s claims that Bronco is not responsible since the workers were hired by an outside contractor that has since been suspended. They further continued to put forward their branding image as a responsible vendor who “checks out all of the companies producing their products before putting them on the shelves.”
Yet, the wine Trader Joe’s stocks is provided by a company that contracts with labor contractors known to be anti-union and with records of failure to uphold state provided labor rights. The current contractor providing labor for West Coast Farming Vineyard has already been accused of failing to provide SHADE since her death (adequate water has now been provided throughout the vineyard). The California investigators who did a random sweep of vineyards immediately following Maria’s death also found consistent violations of labor safety codes throughout the wine industry (see the links in my follow up post for more info). Two Buck Chuck is owned by a company that also owns the wine produced on the farm where Maria died for no reason and Trader Joe’s knows it.
The UFW is calling for people to hold Trader Joe’s responsible for its double speak on the issue. I cannot say whether or not the manager who spoke to a blog reader here was truthful or not but I can say that a pattern of diffusion to evade accountability seems to be emerging. Trader Joe’s relies on liberal branding, the idea that when you see Trader Joe’s you associate it with responsible consumerism and liberal politics, to sell product, if enough people let them know that they are sacrificing that branding to maintain a lucrative contract with a wine company, maybe they will finally stand up for Maria and her family and make sure no one else has to die.
Please consider:
- going into your local Trader Joe’s with a signed pre-written letter to corporate and making a complaint about Two Buck Chuck. (If you don’t want to use your own words, you cut and paste the UFW pre-written letter and sign it)
- handing out flyers (I will try to make some here soon for downloading) outside of trader Joe’s to raise awareness about Two Buck Chuck and Bronco wines
- contacting corporate directly through the UFW website.
Don’t let Maria’s death be swept away by time and greed.
Like a Whisper 
Thank you for writing about this issue – it is so so important. I had no idea that this was going on. Thanks for the links to take action. 🙂
[…] Trader Joe’s stocking of Two Buck Chuck (and to fight for farm workers rights). See her post for more information and […]
So, I heard back from my letter to Bronco Wine.Here’s the full text:Dear Dr. [redacted],Your indictment is without merit nor is it based on fact.Why don’t you wait until the truth is determined? In our part of America, you are innocent until proven guilty.I am surprised that someone with your education is not able to have more “Common Sense.” [sic]Cordially yours,Fred T. FranziaAnd because I faxed the letter from work, even though I used my own name and personal mailing address on the letter, Mr. Franzia mailed his response to my work, and cc’ed my Dean, who was rather upset when he assumed that I had used my university stationery to send the letter.What a…um.
Elusis, I am *so* sorry to hear that Franzia decided to drag your workplace into this; clearly a sign he is on the defense. With regards to that situation, whenever doing something political its best to do it from a non-work and non-volunteer site unless the action is specifically approved and called for by that site. The agency/school will want to limit liability anyway they can which means they will often side with the vendor/offender and that is what the later counts on when responding in the way Franzia did.The other issue, is that the already suspended labor contractor has maintained that “the truth will out” from the beginning. They say that it was Maria’s fiance who did not want to take her to hospital and decided to drive her in to town not them. In other words her death was the family’s fault not theirs. The company has of course sided with them. The reality is that they violated California State labor laws with regards to heat/heat exhaustion and that there is a record of them having violated other, some similar, laws in the past with unpaid fines as sanction. The UFW does not act without merit and recently filed court papers cite evidence that cannot be faked (ie these previous fines) as well as the evidence found by investigators cited in the articles I linked to about wine country in general. Franzia knows this, but he hopes you and others do not. If he calls you ignorant and reactionary and tows the “truth will out” line then he places the doubt on you. By heightening that doubt with a threat, contacting your employer when you did not indicate rank or affiliation except the fax number, he is trying to silence you without the consequence of actually having made a verbal threat to you.Take heart. You are not alone in this struggle for Maria and other farmworkers rights. UFW is working hard on this issue as evidenced by their website and I am sure 1000s have already sent in letters via their site as well. The pressure is on and Franzia knows it. And if Franzia is held responsible, then other wine owners will be as well. So the point is to get the truth out there and then to hope that the state of California does their part and not just spouts rhetoric at rallies.Thanks for being strong. and reporting back.
Well as I said on my own blog, if this is how Franzia responds to a random, white, educated, outside critic, no wonder their brown, poor, un/semi-skilled labor force is being treated like they’re working on a freaking plantation.Here’s hoping my boss doesn’t put a perma-note in my file when we “discuss the matter” next week after she’s back from vacation.Meanwhile, I’m considering pinging assorted mainstream media sources – I don’t want to put myself at the center by any means, but if “Franzia doesn’t just allow worker mistreatment – he’s also KOOKY!” is what it takes to get more attention to Maria’s death and the lives of other workers in the California fields, so be it.
I hope not. Just make a commitment not to use the company fax for non-company stuff in the future and hopefully that will be the end of it. If your boss is at all political, once it is settled, bring up the fact that a pregnant woman died for no reason and you were just trying to make sure it did not happen again.
::RAGE:: Reading Franzia’s reaction has pissed me off even further about this. Why, why, WHY do people try to justify doing wrong? Even if there’s another side of the story that we don’t know about, they make themselves look guilty with this kind of behavior. Who am I likely to believe — the family of a dead girl, or some corporate a—-t who didn’t even try to act like he cared?!I’m taking my letter to Trader Joe’s this weekend.
welcome to the blog nojojojo. it seems a lot of people, especially in CA, are thinking of doing the same thing. 😀 I’m hopeful to see if Trader Joe’s issues a public response on their site or another response to the UFW.