Amy's Kitchen says its food is made with 'love.' Some say the job has left them injured

[cinematicdiversions]

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/amys-kitchen-says-food-made-love-factory-say-job-left-injured-rcna8189?utm_campaign=hrb&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=morning_brew

Some factory workers who make meals at the family business describe an unforgiving workplace that pushes them past the point of injury.

When Ines De La Luz showed up for work at the Amy’s Kitchen factory in Santa Rosa, California, wearing an arm brace, prescribed after she couldn’t move her hand at the end of a fast-paced shift making frozen burritos in July 2020, she says a supervisor ordered her to remove the brace and return to the production line.

De La Luz and another injured worker who cleans the cafeteria say it was called “the corral,” like on a farm. Though they aren’t sure where the name originated, they say it highlighted the feeling that they were no longer important to the company, a family business that is one of the country’s top makers of vegetarian frozen and canned food. De La Luz says that in the fall of 2021, when she learned she was a candidate for surgery to treat her arm injury, Amy’s Kitchen told her it was eliminating her position in the cafeteria and laid her off.

But one former and four current workers say that image is at odds with the painful reality on the factory floor. They say that the growth of Amy’s Kitchen has been made possible by increasing the speed of production lines and that workers are becoming injured in an effort to maintain the speed. They say that the conditions leave them especially vulnerable to repetitive stress injuries that gradually get worse over time.

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It has always amazed and amused me that so many people search the labels for cruelty free and vegan and then use products that utilize child labor and slavery.


TFD has a good video about this very subject.

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[ret5hd]

1. Love hurts?

[mucifer]

2. Thanks for this. BTW there are groups who endorse true cruelty free vegan :

Here is the Food Empowerment Project's ethically sourced chocolate list:

https://foodispower.org/understanding-our-chocolate-list/

Chocolate we feel comfortable recommending
These companies are transparent about the country of origin for the cocoa* beans in their vegan chocolate, and the vast majority of these companies use beans that were not sourced from areas where the worst forms of child labor and slavery are most prevalent.

However, if they are sourcing from Western Africa, the workers must own the companies/be in charge of the profits from their labor. You can learn more about why we had to come to this decision in this post from 2018.

If the company is sourcing from Brazil, the workers must own the company and/or be in charge of the profits from their labor, or the company must be going above and beyond to support the workers and their families. Since child labor and slavery only recently have been documented in cocoa in Brazil (as opposed to than in Western Africa, where it has been widespread for decades), we are giving Brazilian companies that are trying to address the issue by supporting the workers and their families the benefit of the doubt.

You will notice some companies with a line crossed through their name; we try to provide information as to why we have done this.

More info at the website. They are very dedicated and frequently update their list.

[msfiddlestix]

3. Amy's Kitchen is up the road a few miles from me, saw the strikers at an Amy's restaurant

driving by yesterday and wondered: what the hell?

interesting, totally unexpected news of working conditions.