A Message from the United Farm Workers:
“Last month we told you about dairy workers from DeRuyter Brothers of Sunnyside, WA which supplies milk to the huge milk cooperative, Darigold. We shared how workers have been threatened with bullets, have had their wages stolen, and have no alternative but to eat lunch while milking cows in unsanitary conditions.
Thousands of supporters like yourself responded and sent Dairigold’s CEO Jim Wegner more than 7,000 emails. After a month, Darigold’s CEO has not responded in any meaningful way about the worker complaints or taken steps to make things better.
Now we want to tell you about Mensonides Dairy. It is located in Mabton, WA and is another dairy that supplies milk to the huge milk cooperative Darigold.
The cycle of worker abuse that workers from DeRuyter and Ruby Ridge dairies continues at this third Darigold cooperative dairy.
Several workers told us about wage theft and how workers do not get lunch and rest breaks. “Miguel” (an alias) also explained, “Since I started we have never had water to drink… All day we will not drink any water if we forget to take some…There are days in which the punch-in machine will make a mistake or breaks down, and there will be days missing when payday comes. Because we don’t want to be insisting and insisting out of fear of getting fired, they will not pay us. We’ll tell the foreman, and he only ignored the people. There are always people missing days, they never paid me the days that were missing.”
Mensonides Dairy is the third Darigold cooperative we’ve told you about. How long is it going to take before Darigold takes action? How many more workers from how many more Dairigold dairies must come forward?
These three are not isolated cases. We went to many other Darigold dairies from Idaho, to Oregon, to Washington State. What we found were circumstances similar to these. We will continue to share these stories with you in an effort to give these workers a voice. Please take action and e-mail Darigold CEO, Jim Wegner today.“
