Los Angeles County Superior Court ruled last week that employees at Millennium Products, Inc., which now operates as GT’s Living Foods, LLC, worked in exploitative conditions between 2010 and 2014.
The ruling condemns the company as failing to practice what it preaches as the producers of Synergy Kombucha, each bottle of which informs consumers that the beverage is made with “100% pure love.”
New Age Tea Brewed on Vibes?
Whether or not you find any positivity at the bottom of your bottle of kombucha is hard to say. Still, the company has a long history of using this kind of “New Age” language as listed ingredients in their recipes.
In a 2008 interview with the Los Angeles Times, company founder George Thomas Dave explains, “People’s energy has an influence on the quality of the kombucha.” Seven years later, nothing changed. Dave told Inc. Magazine, “As silly as it sounds, because of its living-life-force qualities, the kombucha is sensitive to the energy that surrounds it.”
In court last week, he continued to stand by the idea energy is in the food his company produces. He argued that kombucha is “truly a living, breathing, empathetic, sensitive living food, which is why it keeps me honest with how we behave as a corporation.”
Accusations of Exploitation and Abuse
But despite Dave’s supposed commitment to love and good vibes around his product that can tell the difference, the Los Angeles County Superior Court ruled last week that workers at his company survived “deplorable and abusive and disturbing working conditions.
According to the ruling, GT’s Living Foods engaged in illegal and exploitative practices. The court ruled that the company purposefully hired undocumented workers who could not seek legal recourse, regularly forced employees to work 12 to 14-hour shifts and sign illegal waivers and timesheets lying about the number of hours they worked. Employees were also not allowed reasonable breaks to eat or use the bathroom.
Dave’s Response
In court, Dave seemed unrepentant, portraying himself as a victim, stating, “Unfortunately, in this current state of the world we live in, [lawsuits] just happen if you have any smell of success around you…That is the cross that I bear.”
In a statement released to the Los Angeles Times after the ruling had been filed, Dave writes that he is “saddened” and that “Words such as ‘deplorable,’ ‘abusive’ and ‘disturbing working conditions’ are contrary to the standards I set for my company since I began in 1995.”
Yet the statement also takes a surprisingly legal and defensive tone in response to allegations of retaliation against workers who sued the company in 2013, arguing “no evidence of retaliation of any kind was ever proven.”
It’s worth noting that presiding Judge William Highberger told one of Dave’s attorneys that he “found that Mr. Dave lied through his teeth and is not in any way, shape, or form credible. And if he appears in front of a jury, I’ll tell them not to believe him.”
Just the Beginning
Credibility issues are likely to become much worse for Dave and GT’s Living Foods as this ruling is only the first of a three-phase lawsuit against the company, alleging that the company abused more than 3,000 employees.
Kyle Logan is a film and television critic and general pop culture writer who has written for Alternative Press, Cultured Vultures, Film Stories, Screen Anarchy, and more. Kyle is particularly interested in horror and animation, as well as genre films written and directed by queer people and women. Kyle is a member of the Chicago Indie Critics and along with writing, organizes a Queer Film Challenge on Letterboxd.