Gustavo Rojo Dot Com

Can you believe that the Giumarra company still insists that their workers work on their knees for an entire work day while most other grape companies provide tables with umbrellas. My family worked for this fucked up company all of their lives and I must say that they deserve to go to hell for the way they treat their workers. When you don’t see it on a daily basis it’s easy to forget what it’s like or you simply don’t know the reality of the situation. I still see it every day on my drive to work. Imagine packing grapes on your knees for more than eight hours a day!

When I worked with my mom we had to deal with unfair quotas. We had to produce a certain amount of boxes by a certain time or else we would be sent home. Picking grapes isn’t simply about picking them off the vine. You have to check it to make sure there isn’t any rotten grapes, or raisins in the bunch while at the same time not “shining” the bunch. It’s bullshit I swear. You can’t have speed and perfection. What inevitably happened was that whenever a supervisor was around everyone picked neatly but as soon as they left we had to start picking indiscriminately. A bajar cabrones! It didn’t matter whether the bunch was rotten, filled with raisins, with worms, or spiders, it was time to put it in your tray to get an advantage. The packer simply had to hide these ugly bunches at the bottom of the boxes. I loved doing this. My mom, being the worrier that she is, hated it. I just didn’t see an alternative. We either made the quota or we were going to get sent home from the fields near the Grapevine (I-5) off of Sandrini Road all the way back to Porterville. “Fuck that” I always thought.

Nowadays they still have the nerve to pass out leaflets to their workers pleading them not to join the union or else they will lose out on 10 percent of their check. The morons even have the indecency (or is it simply mockery) of having an illustration of a wad of hundred dollar bills on the leaflet as if picking grapes was such a lucrative career. Shit, thinking back I wouldn’t have minded giving up 2 percent of my check just to have a restroom that was cleaned daily, and not infested with flies and reeking of urine and mierda. Many workers refused to use the restrooms provided because they were filthy and instead they chose to head down the grape vineyard row past the “white stake” and take a shit the “natural way.” Giumarra must think that their workers are “dirty Mexicans” anyways and don’t mind being in the filth.

The fields are filled with injustice. To think that even though we weren’t supposed to start picking officially until 6:30 a.m., half the crew was already picking since 6:00 a.m., if not earlier, just to get a head start. Everyone knew that most of the work had to be done in the morning because in the afternoon it was hell. Yeah, I was in the shade under the vines but it was still fucken hot. Imagine the temperature hovering over 100 degrees and you’re wearing a long sleeve shirt and your face is covered with handkerchiefs to protect you from the dust and who knows what else. I still have remnants of something that I picked up in the form of a rash from picking grapes. It’s still on my skin, mainly on my neck and on my stomach. Since I finally have insurance for the first time in my life I’ll finally get it treated. The dermatologist thinks that I’m going to have to get “it” lasered off.

In the end, most of my family which worked for Giumarra suffers from various injuries and or ailments. When my mom tore a ligament from picking up a box after she packed it up her supervisor simply told her that the doctor was going to order her not to work and she would get paid nothing (Doesn’t mention Worker’s Compensation…devious motherfucker).