The Organic Food Company Is Abusing Workers And Busting Unions.
Over the year’s many companies who claim to be progressive have been exposed as faux progressives once their employees begin to organize. The latest to join the list is Amy’s Kitchen, an organic and non-GMO convenience and frozen food brand that produces over 250 vegetarian and organic products that can be found in supermarkets around the country.
The company, which was founded in the 1980s by Andy and Rachel Berliner and named after their daughter Amy, prides itself on being socially responsible and claims to honor their employees by putting up posts like this on social media: “At Amy’s, our heroes are our employees on the front lines who are coming to work every day so that we can continue to make food for people to eat,” the company said in one popular Facebook post at the start of the pandemic.
Yet workers tell a different story about Amy’s. They say the rapid growth of the company, which now employs over 2,700 workers at facilities in Idaho, Oregon, and northern California, has been mostly based on ever-increasing demands on factory workers. They say that over the years, production lines have steadily increased in speed, but wages have stayed stagnant, and no extra money has been put towards resources to prevent injuries from the increased speeds. One worker even told NBC News that when she showed up wearing an arm brace that was prescribed to her after she couldn’t move her hand at the end of a fast-paced shift, she was ordered by a supervisor to take the brace off and return to the production line.
While the company disputes the workers’ allegations, employees say that they are required to prove their injury by going to physicians working at a nearby Concentra, a for-profit urgent care chain. The workers told NBC that when they go to Concentra, their injuries are downplayed or they are looked at superficially. They also say that the doctors would write things like “suggested guidelines” and limited treatment to smaller areas than what the worker believed was injured. The workers seem to imply that diagnosis was being made to please Amy’s instead of actually caring for the patients.
With workers getting hurt and being asked to do more for the same amount of money, the workers have decided to bring the Teamsters in to help them. In an interview with KTVU, the Teamsters say that they are working with the employees to protest conditions and eventually organize. “The goal right now is that Amy’s Kitchen, by the way of Andy Berliner, the owner, that he sit with these workers and their advocates, which is us to address all these health claims and all these workplace issues,” said Ricardo Hildago, an organizer with the Teamsters Union.
The union has also set up a website to expose the company and push back against the narrative that the company is being socially responsible when it comes to its workers. This includes exposing that the company has been fined by OSHA six times since 2012, including three times in 2019 alone. Over that time the company has paid over $100,000 in OSHA fines.
With workers organizing, the supposedly socially responsible company has decided to spend their profits on union-busters. Labor Lab reports that Amy’s has now brought on Golden Rule Inc. and Libra Management Consulting to stop the organizing drive. According to a filing with the Department of Labor, Amy’s hired Eduardo Padilla, whose LinkedIn profile says that he is a “Direct Persuader” who specializes in union authorization card mitigation, fostering direct engagement with plant personnel and NLRA eligible employees and effectively communicating within a bicultural workforce and the corporate world.