Farmworkers allege unsafe conditions at one of county’s largest vineyard management companies

More than 100 farmworkers and supporters picketed at Vino Farms in Healdsburg Friday, calling attention to what they described as inhospitable, sometimes dangerous working conditions at one of the largest vineyard management companies in Sonoma County.

Former Vino Farms workers said the company uses synthetic pesticides such as Roundup, which has been linked to higher cancer risk and that workers often have to apply those chemicals without much protective gear.

Other complaints: Supervisors often prohibit water breaks during the hottest, busiest times of harvest; the company has used temporary agricultural workers to illegally replace longtime field employees; and that workers have been retaliated against for pointing out those issues.

“When we were spraying at night, the Roundup was blowing because of the wind and it affected us, but … the bosses did not give us much protection,” said Tomas Uriarte.

He said he was one of a group of 12 workers who were let go in 2021.

“You couldn’t complain,” he said.

Uriarte said he was told he was let go because there weren’t “sufficient supervisors.” But he said he believes he and his co-workers, some who lived at the Healdsburg site, were replaced by H2A workers who receive temporary visas to fill agricultural jobs.

Marissa Ledbetter Foster, vice president of operations and a partner at Vino Farms, and also chairperson of the Sonoma County Winegrowers board of directors, did not respond to calls to Vino Farms’ Lodi headquarters and emails seeking comment Friday.

Karissa Kruse, Sonoma County Winegrowers president, also did not respond to a call and email seeking comment.

The spokesperson for Sonoma Wine Industry for Safe Employees, or SonomaWISE, said the allegations are incorrect.

Last year, the U.S. Department of Labor penalized Vino Farms for giving preferential treatment to temporary agricultural workers over local workers.

Wildfires, a drought, COVID-19 and successive heavy rainstorms have contributed to the mounting economic and safety concerns for farmworkers in recent years, spurring increasing worker activism.

Friday’s rally followed at least two years of farmworker organizing in Sonoma County, during which they and allies — generally linked to the advocacy group North Bay Jobs with Justice — have sought hazard pay protection, better working conditions, safety training in their native languages and income supplements to compensate for work lost to natural disasters.

In that time, some other prominent wine industry companies, from the giant E & J Gallo Winery to the ultra premium winery Eco Terreno, have started offering hazard pay in Sonoma County.

“The largest players need to do the right thing for workers,” said Max Bell Alper, executive director of North Bay Jobs with Justice, the labor advocacy group that worked with farmworkers to organize Friday’s picket.

The protest took place against a backdrop of barns, farm equipment, a dozen portable toilets used by farmworkers, and the rolling vineyards in which they tend and pick the grape crop.

Organizers said there were people at the march who hadn't previously taken part in similar events, a sign that the farmworker movement locally is gaining strength. Friday’s protest was the first such event Paulina Atanacio of Santa Rosa had attended. She said she hasn’t been called back to work since October 2022, the end of the last harvest.

“(I’m here) to support my companions who have the same problem of lack of work and whose work is becoming scarce,” said Atanacio, who worked with Enterprise Vineyards for the previous three years and as a vineyard worker since 2011.

The spokesperson for Sonoma Wine Industry for Safe Employees — a group formed in 2022 to push back against the North Bay Jobs with Justice farmworker campaign — disputed the allegations.

“Vino Farms is a highly respected, family-owned, award-winning sustainable farming operation that places worker safety as an absolute priority, with an outstanding reputation for its workplace safety practices,“ said John Segale, whose LinkedIn profile describes him as Western region senior vice president at Fahlgren Mortine, a Columbus, Ohio-based communications firm.

”Vino has a long-standing history of providing its employees with a positive and safe work environment and will continue to do so.”

Segale told The Guardian news organization last year that SonomaWISE has “no connection” with the Sonoma County Grape Growers Foundation (since renamed Fundacion de la Voz de los Viñedos) or Sonoma County Winegrowers and “receives support from the region’s wine community, the local hospitality industry, the business community, area nonprofits and the public.”

According to pesticide use reports from the Sonoma County Department of Agriculture, Weights and Measures collected by North Bay Jobs with Justice and also provided to The Press Democrat by the department, between January 2020 and March 2023, Vino Farms applied 15,377 pounds of glyphosate in its Sonoma County acreage, more than any other company.

Glyphosate — the main ingredient in Roundup, the widely used herbicide manufactured by Monsanto — was added to California's Proposition 65 list of cancer-causing chemicals in 2017. Santa Rosa, Sonoma, Windsor and Sonoma County have since banned or sharply restricted use of such synthetic pesticides on public land.

In an email to The Press Democrat, Segale said that while glyphosate is a highly effective weed killer and legal throughout the country, “it has always been considered a tool of last resort by Sonoma County’s winegrape growers.

“This is a fact from the Sonoma County Ag Commissioner’s Ag Pesticide Use Permit report, which shows that there has been a 53% reduction in the use of glyphosate by local winegrape farmers and more than a 60% reduction in the acres it is used on in the past seven years.”

He added: “The implication that Vino is somehow using any product banned for agricultural use is simply false.”

You can reach Staff Writer Jeremy Hay at 707-387-2960 or jeremy.hay@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jeremyhay. You can reach Staff Writer Jennifer Sawhney at 707-521-5346 or jennifer.sawhney@pressdemocrat.com