Once in love with Amy's Kitchen?

If you look at their website, you'd sure think that Amy's Kitchen is all sweetness and light. They're healing the planet. Taking bold action on climate change. They're vegan. Organic. Sustainable. Gluten free. Family friendly. Ethically conscious. And, they tell us, they love to cook for us. In fact, when you eat food from Amy's kitchen, "you'll be able to taste the love."

I don't want to be the one to quibble, but, yummy-yum-yummy as Amy's products are - and I've tried a few over the years - I don't recall actually being able to taste the love. Maybe it's just these creaky old taste buds.

And factory/smactory. As that website tells us:

We don’t manufacture food. We cook it with love.

Then there's their promise: 

We choose what’s best for our customers, our farmers, our employees and our planet. It’s a tall order, but we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Why even the name Amy's Kitchen. Good golly, is there a sweeter and more wholesome name than Amy? Sure beats Moe by a long shot.

But if you open the door to Amy's Kitchen, things look a teensy weensy bit different. Not so much "once in love with Amy, always in love with Amy." Something more along the lines of Sixteen Tons. Or maybe Take This Job and Shove It. 

They're union-busting phonies, and - despite their vaunted B Corp. credential - that's B for Beneficial - the workers who toil in Amy's Kitchen are manufacturing food, not cooking it with love. And they're not being treated with much love, either.

The Prospect has reviewed a formal complaint filed to the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health on behalf of a worker named Cecilia Luna Ojeda and her co-workers at a company facility in Santa Rosa, California. The Cal/OSHA complaint includes the testimony of several other anonymous workers, translated from Spanish to English. The workers testified to a number of health and safety hazards, multiple worker injuries from high-speed production, violations of management and system procedures, and more. The Prospect has also conducted an interview with [injured pro-union worker] Maria del Carmen] Gonzalez, who described an employer that has lied countless times and disregarded doctor-ordered health protocols for its majority-Latina workforce, while wrongfully terminating multiple workers. (Source: Prospect.org)

The company is facing boycotts. And a California Teamsters local has 

...filed a complaint on behalf of Ojeda against the company’s B Corp status. Delorio wrote, “Amy’s Kitchen has demonstrated a callous disregard for workers’ health, safety, and human rights in violation of the B Corp Declaration of Interdependence.”

Among other tings, the complaint cites OSHA violations that weren't disclosed when Amy's applied for their B Corp Certification. 

As for the "callous disregard" that Amy's demonstrates, there's ample reporting that they exploit their workers and violate the company's own production line safety and health protocols. All in all, it sounds like your typical unsafe food production environment: extreme temperatures, unreasonable line speed demands, blocked exits, etc. Workers who've been injured on the job claim that they've been fired. Employees are scared. Scared of working there. Scared they'll be fired. Standard operating procedure for so many companies that hire immigrant workers who're easy to intimidate and exploit. It almost goes without saying that Amy's is working with a union-busting consultancy, and are whining that if the workforce is unionized, they'll have to shut down. 

I hope the workers call Amy's bluff. 

There are way too many companies that like to put on the nicey-nice smiley face of decency, except when it comes to how they treat their workers. Amy's Kitchen? Sounds more like Hell's Kitchen.

How about it, Amy's? How about cooking with some love for the folks who manufacture the food you profit from?