Boycott Gallo Wine

Do not drink alcohol. It clouds the mind and impairs judgment. It's bad for your health. It can cause personality disorders. And it is a waste of time and money.

You do not need alcohol to have fun and party. If fact you will have more fun without it. You will meet better people (not drunks). And you sex life will improve.

Don’t Drink. It’s stupid.

Gallo corporation is also intruding on the oak woodlands ecosystem of greater Sonoma county with clearcut grape vinyards soaked with pesticides..


"From Wines and Vines, January 2000

Sonoma Natives are Restless
by Mari Kane

Seattle it isn't, but in California's wine country the natives are definately restless. Citizens in rustic Sonoma County are raging against the grape growers who are turning every available pasture, hillside, forest, and orchard into high-value chardonnay and cabernet vineyards. Immense tracts of land, much of which is controlled by Gallo of Sonoma, have been graded, poisoned and planted to grapes. The sight of rampant vineyard expansion is most dramatic along Hwy 101 north of Petaluma, and on 101 just north of Geyserville, where neatly trellised rows of vines dominate the landscape as far as the eye can see. This rapid transformation has proved to be a shock to the senses of local residents and now they are mad as hell and demanding more control.

A new group, the Town Hall Coalition, has organized in response to the panic felt by West County residents. Among their concerns are: ground water depletion, pesticide use, loss of bio-diversity, forest protection, creek contamination, and erosion. With their website, http://www.freestone.com/ruralresponse, the coalition is taking their message of farm responsibility nationwide.

(article about replacement of Sonoma's apple orchards with grape vinyards)

http://www.freestone.com/appleblossom.html

http://www.freestone.com/

It is estimated that 10% of Sonoma's 50,000 acres of vines were converted from wooded land, particularly from orchards, oak and redwood stands. Contributing to public fear is a recent study by the University of California which identified 150,000 acres of mostly woodland that is ideally suited to conversion to grape agriculture."

above and rest of article @:

http://www.marikane.com/kanewrld/natives.html

Pesticides applied to grape vinyards resulted in thousands of workers becoming ill from direct contact exposure via wind. It is nearly impossible to stand in a large grape vinyard and not breath in airborn chemicals from pesticide/herbicide/etc applications..

The resulting illnesses of Mexican grape workers from pesticide exposure led to the table grape boicott organized by Cesar Chavez and UFW. Corporations like Gallo still depend on heavy pesticide applications for their large monocultura vinyards. The less crop diversity, the more pesticides needed..

Grape Boicott "Wrath of Grapes"

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=315

There is some evidence that diseases like "sudden oak death" are in fact a result of overexposure to pesticide/herbicide contamination from wind drift. The oak tree is a living being that can suffer from a toxic chemical exposure similar to humans. A weakened immune system in oak trees from airborn herbicide exposure could result in increased susceptibility to standard diseases like "sudden oak death". The grape belt around Sonoma is one of the locations where sudden oak death initially emerged..

Acorn bread from blue or valley oaks can be enjoied by anyone, just gather some acorns and soak them to remove tannic acid, then peel the shells, soak again, grind into flour and add something to make bread. Is really tasty, healthy and also free!!

Having a few grape vines growing amongst the oak woodlands would improve the quality of life for everyone. Some extra moisture from the trees via deep taproot transpiration would keep the grapes from getting so thirsty. Horizontal oak branches could be included in the trellis framework. A communal oak/grape woodland vinyard could provide people with fair trade food/drink crops for trade and barter minus the pesticide/herbicide toxicity currently employed by Gallo..

We need to challenge the claims of land ownership Gallo corporation makes on large tracts of oak woodlands. how did Gallo come into "owning" half the county land, and who were the initial stewards of the land (Pomo) and where are they now?

These current Gallo monocultura vinyards can be returned to oak woodlands easily (easy physically, not easy boreocratically). Gallo's corporate occupation of oak woodland habitat needs to end..

love, peace and anarchy,

luna moth

Re: Do one better

Jesus drank alcohol and he's not stupid.

Alcohol is used in many Christian faiths in Sunday worship, mostly in symbolic gesture.

I met plenty of intellegent people who drink alcohol.

Bush was a drunkard, some would argue he still is when it comes to natioanal and international policy in that respect your on point.

Lets not throw out the baby with the bath water. In this case wine.

Drink local wines from small businesses.

Why don't the workers quit and work somewhere else? They have no free will? They cannot make any choices for themselves?

Cockfight (California Wines versus Italian Ceramics)

What happens when one of California's largest wine-makers decides its brand name trumps a moniker of a product that's been made in Italy for over 800 years?
They sue the little guy.

Gallo Wineries of Modesto and Sonoma are systematically forcing importers of Italian Ceramics to change the name of an age-old ceramic pattern "Gallo Verde" (it literally translates to "green rooster" in Italian).

I was shocked to read the story of Jennifer King on the Internet. (http://www.dallasobserver.com/issues/2002-05-09/news.html) She was a stay-at-home mom who imported Italian ceramics and sold them online.

After the dot-com burst I started my own online ceramic store and like Jennifer, one of the patterns I import is called Gallo Verde. Also like Jennifer, I just received notice from E&J Gallo to change the name or else.

It seems as if E&J Gallo has such little faith in the consuming public, they believe people will confuse an Italian Ceramic bowl or plate for a bottle of wine.

Support the boycott of E&J Gallo wines.

Thanks for this page.
I'm going to buy a bottle today.

Thanks for this list of wines and the information about why they should be boycotted. I'll definitely avoid giving my dollars to Gallo and let my friends and family know why they should do the same.

Gallo operates in a worldwide market...This means that they must compete in terms of price, etc. with foreign competitors which treat their workers much worse. At least this company offers wages to these American workers with sub-par skill sets. This whole article makes no sense and seems like a whiny attempt by the authors to not feel guilty about their own lives.

Sub-par skill sets?! What planet are you from? Get informed, become a human being. Get a real vocabulary, and learn the real facts.

Para cada traicion un acto de redencion. Si se puede!

Survival of the fittest; that's the name of the game.
Gallo isn't going anywhere. They are huge, enormous, and will always thrive in the wine industry.
They've come along way from the "two buck chuck" and have been producing premium wines and spirits all over the WORLD!
If Gallo Winery wasn't offering benefits before the potential employee accepted the job offer, why would you accept a position with the company? Isn't that what the "interview" is for? What happened to asking the most important questions like: What type of benefits does the company offer, or when can I expect a pay increase? There is no reason to boycott, it's a waste of your time.

Support Farm Workers—Boycott Gallo
By Vanessa Rhodes

From the painfully tedious work of pruning to the brutally rushed labor during harvest, working the grape fields is labor intensive. A typical day begins at 6 AM; the work continues into the hot hours of the afternoon to end around 4 PM. This hard work is rewarded with low pay and few benefits.

The workers of Gallo in Sonoma County have been fighting hard to improve working conditions, making strides to overcome an eight-year drought in wage increases. However, while some Gallo workers now earn $8.18 an hour, have 8 days of vacation and receive health benefits for themselves and for their families, the majority do not. Seventy-five percent of Gallo workers are hired through farm labor contractors (FLC), third-party agencies—a contract loophole that denies the majority of the workers their hard-fought benefits. This inequality is at the heart of the current battle being fought by the United Farm Workers Union of America (UFW).

On June 14, 2005, the UFW announced the official boycott of all E & J Gallo, Inc., labels in an act of solidarity with all Gallo farm workers in Sonoma County who seek a fair contract. UFW President Arturo Rodriguez states, “We will ask millions of people of good will to respond to an appeal for them to act constructively by convincing the Gallos to do the responsible thing. And in the end, we will succeed.”

Neither Gallo nor the UFW workers are strangers to these conflicts. Salvador Mendoza, a former Gallo worker and a longtime UFW union organizer, stated that the Gallo family is notorious for treating their workers poorly and for their anti-union values. In turn, the workers have had a long history of fighting back. In 1973, the UFW led the way in asserting rights for farm workers during the first Gallo boycott. At that time, Gallo had colluded with the Teamsters Union to destroy the workers’ organization under the UFW. The Gallo workers fought back through a harvest-time strike and then mounted a multiyear boycott that helped bring about the passage of the Agricultural Labor Relations Act. This act enforces basic provisions that were at one time denied to workers: accessible bathrooms, cold water, and the right to organize without retaliation. The successful boycott and other gains of the 1970s brought about changes that at one time were un-thinkable. The opportunity to confront injustices is again at hand. Yet now the fields face different challenges and new obstacles.

Gallo workers in Sonoma County are in the front line of these struggles. In 1994, the workers overwhelmingly voted for union recognition and in 2000 signed their first contract. This five-year struggle ran into a wall when the company refused to extend the health benefits, seniority, grievance/arbitration procedure and vacation to workers employed through FLCs. The full benefits of the contract signed in 2000 strictly covered the direct hires, but it was a tentative agreement to re-address the needs of the FLCs in the next contract. At that time, the majority of the labor force was direct hires. Today, FLC workers constitute more then 75% of Gallo’s farm labor. Gallo is fiercely holding on to an industry trend that offers companies an out in regard to worker’s compensation claims and to providing employees benefits.

FLCs provide easily exploited labor; FLC workers also prove to be an erratic workforce, which is practically immune to being organized. Workers of the FLCs are mostly young Mexican men who have immigrated from Puebla, Michoacan, and Oaxaca. These immigrants do not cross the desert on a five-day hike with only the clothes, water, and food they can carry, only then to fight the injustices of the California farm labor system. They come in search of fair work. Gallo and other corporate wine giants understand that and use it in their favor. The FLC loophole is exploited by almost all growers in the agricultural industry, and the UFW is fighting back. When the contract expired in November of 2003, the question of the FLCs became the focal point of the negotiations.

The workers’ insistence on including the FLCs in the contract will force this wine giant to lose an exploitative economic edge in the industry. It is no surprise that Gallo is fighting back. In January 2004, Gallo was charged by the Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB) with unfair labor practices. Company foremen and supervisors were found circulating and directing workers to sign a decertification petition to oust the UFW. Decertification is only valid when the request to decertify the union is driven by the workers themselves. In November 2004, the ALRB unanimously ruled that the decertification attempted had been engineered by the company and charged Gallo with unfair labor practices.

Throughout the negotiations, workers charge that dishonesty and ill-will on the part of Gallo have become more and more evident; this helps to further their resolve. Although the organizing efforts have been strong, they have not achieved all the goals. Gallo continues to deny additional benefits to employees working under FLCs. The UFW bargaining committee has offered a counter-proposal to provide the FLC workers with an end-of-the-season bonus. The grape harvest ends in December, a month when workers traditionally go back to Mexico. In a clear example of bad-faith negotiating, Gallo’s counter-offer promised to pay the workers this bonus in January. However, Gallo knows that it is never certain that a worker will return the next season or that the supervisor of the FLC will choose to re-hire the worker; this option is a complete insult to the workers.

A commercial boycott of Gallo products will allow the public to hold this wine giant accountable to fair labor practices and prevent Gallo from taking advantage of the FLC loophole. A successful boycott will have a serious economic impact on Gallo and push it to comply with the demands set forth by its workers at the negotiating table—mainly equal benefits for direct hires and FLC workers. California’s wine consumption alone is twice the national average. Our buying power is an effective tool in bringing justice to hardworking people who put food on our table and wine in our glasses. First UFW Vice President Irv Herschembalm stated in an interview that “after nineteen months of trying to get Gallo to respect the workers, it has become clear that the only thing Gallo respects is power, so we are taking the power to the community.”

Gallo must respect the rights and needs of the workers in this industry. Farm workers are once again asking for your help. Join in solidarity with them and say NO to Gallo wine.

Their getting paid better here than in Mexico. What about the burger flippers and the taco rollers? They need to be paid more too, no airconditioning in those fast food joints.