Growers answered immigration crackdown fears with higher wages and benefits
An anticipated shortage of vineyard workers to harvest this season’s wine crop was mitigated by growers offering higher wages and improved benefits and by an influx of farm workers from the fields around Stockton and Fresno who were attracted to better conditions in Sonoma County.
Last summer, vineyard owners and vineyard management companies in Sonoma and Napa counties made little secret of their fears that several factors, especially bellicose rhetoric from the Trump administration about restricting labor by undocumented workers, would result in fewer people available to harvest this year’s wine crop.
While the median hourly wage in Fresno County this year for farm workers was $10.76, many vineyards were willing to pay about $15 an hour in Sonoma County during this season’s harvest, according to Armando Elenes, the United Farm Workers national rights president who works out of Santa Rosa offices.
They primarily came from lesser-paying jobs in the areas around Stockton and Fresno, he said.
“Yes, there was a labor shortage but, no, it did not have a major impact because the fact was, labor was attracted to our area,” Elenes said. “The bigger impact was that our growers began competing for that labor and they were used to relying on a surplus.”
Many of the big names in wine, like Gallo and Mondavi, and the local brands prominent on the upscale market — like Balleto in the Russian River Valley, Iron Horse in Green Valley, Ceja in the Carneros region and St. Supéry in the Napa Valley — reportedly improved the health benefit packages offered as well as increased pay in order to compete and ensure this year’s crop was harvested in time.
About 60 percent of Sonoma County vineyards contract with vineyard management companies to supply workers with the expertise to maintain roots through the winter and spring, trim leaves in the summer months and recognize the optimal time for harvest in the fall. Some vineyard managers said they were paying about 33 percent higher wages this harvest than the one in 2015.
Currently, there are 5,186 full-time workers toiling in vineyards in the county, according to the Sonoma County Winegrape Commission, and another 2,644 workers who come here to perform seasonal tasks. Commission officials say the highest skilled workers during harvest can make up to $30 an hour.
Also, the vineyard labor situation appeared to benefit from the reputation of north coast wines as premium products that often require skillful handling rather than mechanized harvesting.
While some portion of Sonoma County vineyards are harvested by mechanical pickers, producers on the premium end prefer undamaged and unbruised grapes and that requires higher levels of skills.
“When we are talking about the fine wines produced here, a lot of it is hand pruned and hand cut,” Elenes said. “Growers were not willing to sacrifice quality and they were more willing to compete for labor and they were not used to that.”
At the annual Wine Industry Financial Symposium last September in Napa, many speakers identified problems with labor availability as a major challenge facing the recent harvest.
Most agreed that they are looking at mechanical harvesting as a partial solution, but that hand picking and hand sorting remains the preferred option.
At the symposium, Bobby Koch, president and CEO of the Wine Institute in San Francisco, told the assembly that his organization remains concerned about the affect of national immigration policy on the available labor, but that, “no one is sure what might happen in D.C.”
Elenes conceded that the UFW and the grape growers “were on high alert” most of the year as they worried that Trump administration policies restricting undocumented workers and threatening deportations would deplete the workforce.
A crackdown on farm workers in Oregon last March set many on edge for what similar efforts by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency might mean for the local wine industry.
Nationally about half of all farm workers lack proper residency documentation, according to several studies, but that figure is disputed locally by vineyard management companies that insist they verify paperwork as best as they are able.
However, stepped up federal immigration law enforcement efforts did not materialize in the vineyards, according to vineyard managers.
“There was a lot of rhetoric and a lot of fear and 70 percent of it was fricking nuts,” Elenes said.
