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Napa Valley wine workers ask Krug-Mondavi to avoid nationwide boycott

12 noon Friday in St. Helena
Napa Valley wine workers ask Krug-
Mondavi to avoid nationwide boycott

Appealing to the nation’s 15th largest winery to avoid a nationwide boycott, Napa Valley workers protest at 12 noon Friday on Hwy. 29 in St. Helena outside the Charles Krug Winery—operated for three generations by the Peter Mondavi family—less than a month before the company vows to fire them all.

Cesar Chavez once asked, “What is the worth of a farm worker?” Krug-Mondavi’s web site boasts about “the history and tradition that our family is proud to uphold.”**

Demonstrators outside the winery on Friday will ask whether Krug-Mondavi’s history and tradition extend to its farm workers, a number of whom have decades of service with the winery that has sternly fought union representation since 1975.

Krug-Mondavi workers voted to be represented by the United Farm Workers in 1975 during one of California’s first union elections. After their UFW contract expired Dec. 31, 2005, Krug-Mondavi vowed to fire all the workers and turn over vineyard operations to a land manager who reports to winery management as a cost-savings measure. Krug-Mondavi is undergoing a $21.6 million capital improvement drive on its 850 prime Napa Valley acres. Also on Friday, the UFW is filing formal charges against Krug-Mondavi for bad-faith bargaining and discrimination with the state Agricultural Labor Relations Board.

Much of the UFW’s campaign against the company will focus on Internet appeals that proved effective during last year’s successful union drive to win a renewed contract for Gallo winery workers in Sonoma County. Hundreds of thousands of supporters weighed in during the Gallo drive. Krug-Mondavi has also been beset by complaints of sexual harassment by its foremen filed by women workers.

Who: Krug-Mondavi vineyard workers and their supporters.
What: Appealing to the company to avoid a nationwide boycott of its wines.
When: 12 noon, Friday, June 2, 2006.
Where: Outside Charles Krug Winery, 2800 Main St. (on Hwy. 29), St. Helena.

*Cesar Chavez’s address at Pacific Lutheran University, March 1989. ** See www.charleskrug.com.

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