SHAFTER, Calif. — (Update: Saturday, January 12 1:34 p.m.)
Employees at The Wonderful Company gathered for the second day outside of the Wonderful Orchards in Shafter over pay.
According to Armando Elenes with the United Farm Workers, he says they will continue to protest until The Wonderful Company responds to them.
The Wonderful Company issued a statement yesterday, however, they have not released any new statements.
Employees at The Wonderful Company are protesting outside of the Wonderful Orchards in Shafter over pay.
According to employees at the protest, the price employees receive for a bin of collected fruit has gone down. Employees say they used to be paid $53 per bin. However, employees say when they came into work today, they were told they would now only receive $48 per bin. According to employees at the protest, employees who collect fruit only get paid by the bin, not by the hour. Employees say that "really fast" workers make two bins a day.
Mark T. Carmel, Director of Corporate Communications, says The Wonderful Company is "disappointed" that some employees have decided to protest.
We are disappointed that some of our third-party labor contractors decided to protest at one of our fields. Seasonally, this is the time of year when we transition from harvesting clementines to mandarins. This season due to the smaller size of the clementines, we paid a premium for harvesting and we’re back to paying regular wages for mandarins. We are confident we will quickly resolve this matter.
In December, The Wonderful Company announced it is increasing its minimum wage to $15 an hour for full-time California employees, which became effective Jan. 1.
This is a developing story. We will update you as more information becomes available.
