(Pictured Right): Blue Diamond workers took their first public action together by walking in Sacramento’s Cesar Chavez Day Parade on March 26, 2005. About half the workers are Latino. Some 10% are Punjabi, 10% come from other Asian backgrounds, 10% are African American and 20% are white. Nearly half are women.

(Pictured Left): Blue Diamond workers tried to deliver a letter to management asking that it respect their rights under the National Labor Relations Act. Alex Barrios from California Assembly member Dave Jones’ office and Bill Camp, head of the Sacramento Central Labor Council, came with them.

(Pictured Right): Blue Diamond met the workers’ organizing with a nasty anti-union campaign that included firings, discipline and threats. The National Labor Relations Board ordered BDG to re-hire two of the fired union supporters with full back pay and interest. Their co-workers welcomed them back April 24, 2006.

(Pictured Left): On the second International Day of Action for Blue Diamond Workers, the British Columbia Federation of Labour joined forces with the ILWU for a noontime march through the heart of Vancouver’s shopping district. They marched to a local Safeway that sells Blue Diamond snacks, and asked the managers to put a call in to the company urging it to change its antiunion ways. Allies in Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Spain and Denmark also took part in the series of actions during late April and early May of 2006.

(Pictured Right): Since summer 2006, the workers on the Blue Diamond Organizing Committee have stepped up their push for a neutrality agreement. They have traveled all over California trying to speak with members of BDG’s Board of Directors—and they went to Seoul and Tokyo as guests of unions there. In Tokyo, they took part in a demonstration in front of Blue Diamond’s Japan office.