Help fired Vignolo activists get their jobs back and win a union contract

[Omaha Steve]

Martha Galvan, and Sandra Ortega and other grape workers from Vignolo Vineyards need your help today. This is their story:



"I have been working at this company since 1997, doing work in the vines such as tying, de-leafing, de-bunching, tipping and harvesting," Martha says. But the company would not hire women for the winter pruning season or for leading crews as forepersons. Women were "lazy," the general supervisor said. "Women are useless" was another of his favorite refrains.

Martha, Sandra and a few other brave workers became leaders and encouraged their fellow workers to organize for a UFW contract. They were tired of the gender discrimination, sub-standard wages, being forced to work off the clock, a lack of shade and prompt medical attention and most of all basic respect from supervisors who humiliated workers on a regular basis.

"In the summer of 2006, we signed authorization cards to be represented by the United Farm Workers," Sandra Ortega explains. "The company started making changes. They began to allow women to prune and stopped making the workers take their grape trays to be washed at home. We no longer had to take our scales or umbrellas home, either. We did this, and all of the workers benefited."



Yet when Martha and Sandra and two other women filed an unfair labor practices charge against Vignolo for discriminating against them, the company retaliated against the four by not only refusing hire them to prune, but not letting them work at all. The UFW has filed a complaint with the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board on their behalf. Resolution of the charges is pending.

Martha's family is struggling. Still, she has no regrets. "We sometimes feel sad about what we have suffered, but we remember all the changes that we have caused." Sandra declares, "I still would do it all over again...We will keep fighting for what is right."

The UFW is committed to getting these brave women’s jobs back and to getting them lost wages. However this costs thousands of dollars in organizers’ time, attorneys’ fees as well as basic things like gas to meet with the workers. Could you please make a gift of $10 $25, $36, $50, $100, $250, or whatever amount works for you so we can cover these costs, continue our work on behalf of the Vignolo workers, and help get justice for these women who are being punished for their activism.


Please make your donation today: https://secure.ga6.org/08/vignolo/nQ7S3S57qmpQ_?


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