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September 22, 2017 CapitalPress.com 15 CapitalPress.com 15 Washington orchard strike gets resolved By DAN WHEAT Capital Press QUINCY, Wash. — Sev- eral H-2A-visa foreign guest- workers who went on strike at a Quincy orchard are back at work with assurances they won’t be retaliated against but with no guarantee of work next year. Seventeen of approximate- ly 27 H-2A workers at W&L Orchards nine miles south- west of Quincy quit picking Gala apples for five days in protest of alleged bullying by a supervisor for allegedly not working fast enough. There were other complaints about working conditions. “They took advantage of our open door policy and brought their complaints to us and we listened and were happy to be able to address their concerns and get every- one moving forward again,” said Keith Larson, president of Larson Fruit Co., Selah, which owns W&L. In response to their com- plaints there were multiple state Department of Labor & Industries inspections and “no serious violations brought to our attention,” Larson said. Three workers who were fired have been reinstated and a different person has been put in supervision of the crew, said Larson, who declined comment on the validity of the com- plaints. An agreement was worked out between the workers and the company. Familias Unidas por la Justicia (FUJ) and Co- lumbia Legal Services helped the workers, Larson said. FUJ is a Burlington farm- workers union that started in 2013 to represent workers at Sakuma Bros. berry farm in Burlington. Larson Fruit agreed to not retaliate against or blacklist the workers, may hire them back next year if they do good work but there are no guarantees, Larson said. Larson Fruit hired the work- ers from Mexico with the help of the Olympia-based farm la- bor association WAFLA. The association hires firms to recruit H-2A workers in Mexico, arranges their visas and transports them to the em- ployer who hires them. WA- FLA has arranged hirings of probably about 10,000 H-2A workers this year. Dan Fazio, WAFLA direc- tor, said the workers who struck at W&L came from the same state in Mexico and apparent- ly were friends or relatives of H-2A workers who struck at Sarbanand Farms, a blueberry farm in Sumas, after a 28-year- old H-2A worker died there in early August apparently from pre-existing conditions. Sumas is on the Canadian border about 45 miles north of Burlington. WAFLA is not in- volved with the blueberry farm, Fazio said. Joe Morrison, Columbia Legal Services attorney in Wenatchee, said there is no ev- idence the Quincy strike was in sympathy or connected with the strike in Sumas. Morrison said he and FUJ were both involved in Sumas and Quincy but that workers in Quincy approached Larson with grievances before he and FUJ were involved. Complaints in Quincy and Sumas were similar about abu- sive foremen and work condi- tions. “Sumas should have been a wake up call to the industry, that a company should listen instead of doing what they did in Sumas which is to fire peo- ple. A month later in Quincy, Larson and WAFLA didn’t learn from that. They followed the same play book and to me that’s incredibly disturbing,” Morrison said. The workers in Quincy pre- sented grievances to Larson Fruit on Sept. 6. On Sept. 7 a Larson employee and a WA- FLA employee visited the or- chard and said a list would be prepared of those who could work and those who could go back to Mexico, Morrison said. Fearful for their jobs the whole group went back to work, Morrison said. On Sept. 8 state L&I inspec- tors arrived at the workers’ re- quest. On Sept. 9 Larson fired three workers and then all the workers went on strike again, he said. FUJ helped workers in negotiations with Larson and the company reversed course, reinstated fired work- ers, changed the foreman and signed an agreement, Morrison said. “We were just motivated to get everyone back to work. We have a crop to pick,” Larson said. He declined comment on whether worker grievances were valid or contrived by union agitation. “Does Larson or WAFLA have any proof FUJ was there to trump up stuff? Why, if this was trumped up, would Lar- son rehire them?” Morrison asked. A Larson Fruit Co. attorney told WAFLA that FUJ want- ed WAFLA to sign Larson’s agreement with its workers, Fazio said. “Normally, you don’t sign an agreement where you’re not a party to the dispute and are not at the negotiating table,” he said, explaining WAFLA did not sign. “I think the workers wanted a guarantee to be hired through WAFLA next year if Larson did not hire them,” Fazio said. “The H-2A program is a great deal for workers and Washing- ton employers have a well-de- served reputation as tops in the nation. I understand the work- ers’ concern.” Morrison said either Fazio doesn’t trust his lawyer or his client or doesn’t want to pledge that WAFLA won’t re- taliate. 1-800-882-6789 • www.capitalpress.com 1400 Broadway St. NE Salem, OR 97301 P.O. Box 2048 Salem, OR 97308 View all classified ads absolutely free at www.capitalpress.com Acreage.........................................579 Alpacas & Llamas...........................743 Antique Farm Eq. & Parts ..............905 Antique/Classic Vehicles................201 Antiques & Collectibles .................813 Arts & Crafts...................................816 ATVs/Motorcycles...........................219 Auction Sales.................................354 Automobiles..................................204 Bees...............................................823 Bison.............................................761 Boat Trailers...................................260 Boat/RV Storage.............................269 Boating Parts Accessories .............254 Boats for Sale.................................251 Boats Wanted................................257 Building Materials.........................804 Business-Sales Opportunities ........643 Business for Sale...........................644 Campers & Canopies .....................310 Cattle - Beef...................................758 Cattle - Dairy..................................755 Christmas Trees.............................821 Coast Property...............................543 Commercial Property.....................525 Condos for Sale..............................510 Dairy Eq. & Supplies......................872 Dairy Farms...................................567 Dogs, Cats, Pets.............................728 Draft Horses & Equip.....................734 Emu, Ostrich, Rhea .......................744 Equestrian Property.......................552 Exotic Animals...............................737 Farm Buildings..............................805 Farm Chemicals.............................827 Farm Equip Parts...........................902 Farm Equipment............................923 Farm, Yard, Estate Sales ................351 Farms.............................................564 Feed, Grain....................................719 Fencing..........................................802 Fertilizer........................................825 Fish................................................721 Forklifts.........................................896 Fuel, Heating & Firewood .............807 Garden, Turf, Yard Equip................908 Generators.....................................878 Goats.............................................746 Hay Equip......................................911 Hay, Straw, Forage.........................716 Heavy & Indust. 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Canned wine has surged in popularity in recent years. Canned wine aimed at active drinkers Sales of canned wine have surged in recent years By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI Capital Press The Dunning family will break from tradition upon in- troducing their estate-grown Pinot gris later this year — the wine will debut in cans rather than bottles. The idea is to target the “active wine drinker” who prefer not to lug around a heavy 750-milliliter glass bot- tle on hikes and other outdoor adventures, said Kyle Dun- ning, the family’s patriarch. “There are places you can’t take a bottle where you can take a can,” Dunning said. Kyle and his wife, Holly, planted the first grape vines on their property near Corval- lis, Ore., in 1990, back when their two sons, Parker and Brayden, were still young- sters. Since then, the family has mostly harvested and sold grapes to winemakers, but they’ve recently taken steps to become more vertically in- tegrated. Last year, their two grown sons launched a mobile bot- tling and canning service under the “Knotty Brothers” brand, under which the fami- A can of Knotty Brothers wine, which is produced by the Dun- ning family from grapes grown on their property near Corvallis, Ore. Canned wine has surged in popularity in recent years. ly’s wine will also be sold. About 350 cases of the wine cans were fermented by winemaker Joe Dobbes from grapes that were harvested from the family’s vineyard last year. The Dunnings have a ready-made clientele for the product among the wineries, breweries and cideries across Eastern Oregon and Idaho that contract with Knotty Brothers for bottling and can- ning services. Cans offer convenient por- tion control, as each holds the equivalent of two wine glass- es, said Holly. With a 750-mil- liliter bottle, consumers must either commit to drinking the whole thing or risk degrading the quality of leftover wine by exposing it to oxygen. For breweries, the cans provide an opportune serving container, so they don’t have to invest in glasses, said Park- er. “They don’t need to do anything to sell our wine.” Many sports arenas and parks don’t allow glass bot- tles but can be entered with cans, which are also simple to recycle, said Robert Zarate, a canning consulant hired by the Dunnings. “It’s growing for sure. It’s getting big,” he said. Between 2012 and 2016, sales of canned wine surged from less than $2 million to more than $14 million in the U.S., according to the Nielsen research company. That’s still only about 1 percent of the total wine mar- ket, but “portability” is seen as a big plus, with 73 percent of consumers saying easy-to- carry containers are important to them, according to Nielsen. Canning wine involves a somewhat different process than canning beer, since the federal government requires a slightly larger can size — the equivalent of half a bottle, or roughly 12.5 fluid ounces. The cans are also lined with a polymer coating to pre- vent wine from eating away at the aluminum container, since it’s more acidic than beer. Also, each can must be dosed with nitrogen gas to replace oxygen, which spoils wine over time. (See answers in Class 570)