Farmworkers protest outside Pindar wine shop

It would have seemed like any other day in Port Jeff village if not for the group of union farmworkers picketing on Main Street.

Half-a-dozen members of Local 338 RWDSU/UFCW assembled outside the storefront of Pindar wine shop on Thursday, Nov. 10, in a call of action against the shop’s parent company, Pindar Vineyards of Peconic. The protesters carried picket signs and remained for two hours.

The Port Jefferson wine store is one of Pindar’s two locations, the other a tasting room located at the Peconic winery itself. Thursday’s protest was part of the union’s ongoing efforts to negotiate with Pindar for a new contract.

“This is a call of action to let the community know what’s been going on,” said Noemi Barrera, union organizer with Local 338. Requests for comment to Pindar Vineyards have been unanswered to date.

The New York Farm Laborers Fair Labor Practices Act took effect in 2020. Among other conditions, this law granted farm workers compensation benefits, a mandatory day of rest, set wages and overtime rates, and established a right to organize.

The controversy with Pindar centers around more than a year of back-and-forth negotiations between the union and the wine company. Those negotiations have stalled, according to a statement by Local 338 president John Durso, prompting the workers to take action.

“Despite our best efforts to avoid it, Pindar Vineyards forced us to take direct action recently to make consumers and the public fully aware of their unwillingness to come to a fair deal for our members,” Durso said. “Local 338 has been negotiating a labor contract with Pindar Vineyards for over a year, and the process has been a slow and difficult one.”