This marked the second time the Council had taken action for the Blue Diamond workers. At a packed and dramatic meeting Dec. 5, 2006, the Council passed a resolution urging the company to sign a neutrality agreement with the ILWU. Company management has not responded to that or any other input from the community it has called home for nearly 100 years--the community that gave it around $21 million in public aid in 1995 to keep it from leaving town.

Even one of the Council members who gave thumbs down on the 2006 resolution approved of this year's call for an ad hoc committee.

"Having the kind of dialogue my colleague is suggesting can only be helpful," Council member Robert King Fong said. "We have a responsibility to the employer and the employees at Blue Diamond to try to help resolve this situation." Read more about the Council meeting and other recent developments in the campaign here.

Blue Diamond Organizing Committee members Gene Esparza and Maria Arellano addressed the thousands of marchers, who represented dozens of unions and community groups. The workers have seen their conditions improve since they started organizing, Arellano said. "But we know why we made those gains, and we know we will lose them if we do not have a union."

"All we want is a fair vote," Esparza said. "We want a fair vote, not a rigged vote, and we need your help to get it."

Then the crowd marched up to the Blue Diamond gift shop and sat down for a minute in front of it, yelling and chanting support for the workers' right to organize.

"I make myself present through this message to support the righteous cause of the Blue Diamond workers to reach greater solidarity among themselves and struggle together as a whole for a better future for their families," Bishop Soto wrote.

"Coming together in a union can serve as an effective instrument for furthering the common welfare and promoting the dignity of the worker as a brother and companion in the quest for a more righteous world."

"Historically, the success of Blue Diamond Growers is the result of the growers' own efforts to work together for each others' benefits," the Bishop wrote. "The earnest ambitions of your employees are no different. I sincerely hope and pray that both the Growers and their employees will find an equitable accommodation to resolve this unnecessary labor-management tension."

The Bishop also urged Blue Diamond to agree to fair ground rules for a union vote, and offered any of the parish halls in Sacramento as a location for the election.

Youngdahl has yet to respond.

"M.E.Ch.A.'s motto is 'La unión hace la fuerza,' in unity there is strength," said Steven Payan, a member of M.E.Ch. A. at Woodland Community College and an organizer of the support action. "These workers are part of us. They're people of color, people in the struggle. We know some of them are scared and we want to increase their hope and faith by letting them know we're behind them."

M.E.Ch.A., the nation's largest Chicano student organization, also committed to spread word of the Blue Diamond workers' union fight through its chapters around the country. If Blue Diamond has not agreed to ground rules for a free and fair vote by the group's next national conference, it will consider a boycott.

Blue Diamond did its best to keep the workers from seeing this colorful and energetic show of support. Management closed the plant on Good Friday for the first time in at least 20 years--and sent leads out to scrub the street before workers returned the next day.

Blue Diamond Growers has been getting some serious subsidies from the U.S. government for many years now. Since 2003, the USDA's Market Access Program (MAP) has given Blue Diamond and the California Almond Board more than $9 million to market California almonds overseas. Blue Diamond's status as a proven labor law-breaker hasn't stopped this funding.

Now the Agriculture Dept. is rewriting the rules for the MAP. The ILWU went to the agency's hearings on the rules changes, and proposed restrictions on funds for companies like Blue Diamond that violate the law.

Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), chair of the Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, wrote a strong letter to the Acting Secretary of Agriculture to support such a change in the MAP rules. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) co-signed.

Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and George Miller (D-CA) wrote a similar letter. DeLauro chairs the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee and Miller chairs the Committee on Education and Labor.

DeLauro and Miller noted that MAP participants must respect all the laws of foreign countries in which they operate.

"American workers should be extended the same courtesy, and domestic laws should be given the same respect," they wrote. "When a MAP recipient violates federal laws, the USDA should take assertive action and punish the violator, if necessary," they said, mentioning Blue Diamond by name.

You will find both the Harkin-Boxer letter and the DeLauro-Miller letter attached to this story.

The leafleters simply wanted See's to put a word in with Blue Diamond, and urge the almond company to agree to fair ground rules for a union election. The regional manager demanded they leave.

"She told us she had called the police and they had been dispatched and were coming our way," ILWU Organizer Jon Brier reported. "We thanked her, and again explained that we were not out to hurt See's--to which she responded, 'Well, you are!' When we reiterated that we are not here to cause trouble but See's needs to act responsibly, she said 'You do cause trouble. You come here in your dumb costumes and bother people.'

"After Rudolph wiped away the last of his dumb tears, we saw a police car pull in, drive through the parking lot, and keep going--failing entirely to stop and hassle us. We then passed out our flyers, having great conversations with many friendly customers who stopped and wanted to know more. Several said they would call See's."

"If Mike said he'd be there, I would know I could count on it," said Agustin Ramirez, ILWU's lead organizer on the Blue Diamond campaign. "There aren't a lot of people like that."

Mike showed up on Sunday. On Tuesday he died in heart surgery that was supposed to be routine. He was 61 years old. He had worked at Blue Diamond for 33 years. His younger brother and sister, Raulin and Maryl, and his daughter, Sarah, survive him.

Raulin remembers him as the big brother who backed him up. "When I was a little guy, he'd stick up for me if he thought an older kid was giving me a hard time," Raulin said. "He never got much past the 150-pound mark, though he was tall, but he was a real bulldog." Mike's friends at work remember that bulldog determination in the guy who decided to walk to work when his truck broke down five miles from the plant.

Born in Sacramento in 1946, Mike served two tours in Vietnam. When he got back to the States he went to Cal State Hayward, graduating with a BA in history. He started at Blue Diamond soon after.

A fall at work hurt his back, left his tall frame stooped and his walk a slow shuffle. But there was nothing slow about his mind or his tongue. He would flay a bad boss up one side and down the other.

"That's dumber than dirt," he said about a comment by Blue Diamond CEO Doug Youngdahl. "That's dumber than what the cat buries in the dirt." He reserved special venom for the company's safety manager, who he could rag on for 10 minutes at a stretch without drawing breath, and for the Bush administration.

Mike's thorough dislike of the Republicans made for some lively discussions with his conservative brother and sister-in-law.

"We had our differences, but we never took it personally," Raulin said. "I was his best man at his wedding and he was mine." Mike's marriage didn't last, but he remained devoted to his daughter.

"For the first 18 years of her life, he would travel back and forth between Fresno and Sacramento every other weekend to pick her up for visits," Raulin said. "He plastered his house with large portraits of her they took on at least an annual basis."

When the Blue Diamond workers tried to organize with the ILWU back in 1990, Mike was one of the strongest anti-union voices. This time around, he stood aside for a while.

"One day Mike came up to me in the lunch room and said, 'Gene, I got to apologize to you,'" Organizing Committee member Gene Esparza said. "I asked him 'what for?' and he said, 'I was against it last time, but I really woke up.' After that he always used to come visit in the break room, and he was always talking about the union."

Mike and other committee members took advantage of their summer layoff in 2006 to visit the growers who sit on Blue Diamond's board of directors. With ILWU organizers, they criss-crossed north-central California, from Modesto and Merced to Colusa and Chico at the peak of that year's heat wave. They turned up at school board meetings and candidates' nights, banks and newspaper offices and other places where the growers had business--with Mike in his trademark baggy shorts, white tube socks, and leather shoes.

"We go to show a presence in these fat cats neighborhoods," Mike said at the time. " I don't think they care for that. It's like airing their dirty laundry. They're very resistant.

"Almond Growers tried to paint the campaign into a little area around 18th and C Streets, but its bigger than that little square around the plant," he said. "I tell them it's going on the world stage, and wherever Blue Diamond is, the ILWU will be there too." And so will Mike.

"Something very exciting happened today," said Rev. Dr. David Thompson of Westminster Presbyterian Church, where the forum took place. "As a community, we're getting more and more serious about seeing a fair resolution to the labor situation at Blue Diamond."

Dr. Thompson sat on the panel at the forum, along with State Sen. Darrell Steinberg, Sacramento City Council member Steve Cohn, Joan B. Lee of the Gray Panthers, Chris Jones of ACORN, Gary Passmore from the Congress of California Seniors, Professor Paul Burke from Sacramento State University and Guambry Santillan from Sacramento City College MEChA.

Six Blue Diamond Organizing Committee members told the panel that the company's anti-union campaign cast a lasting pall of fear over the plant.

"They wrote me up for singing 'mighty, mighty union,'" Alma Orozco said. "The NLRB said that was wrong, but they're still harassing me. I spend more time in the supervisors' office than on the sorting belt."

Ben Monarque reminded the panel that Blue Diamond never admitted wrongdoing, even after the NLRB found the company guilty of 20 violations of labor law.

"Blue Diamond threatened to close the plant, threatened we would lose our pensions and fired two of my co-workers," Monarque said. "People are still afraid to ask about the union or talk to union supporters."

Though employers typically trumpet the democratic value of secret ballot elections, such pre-election misconduct does much to prejudice the vote, according to University of Oregon political science professor Gordon Lafer, who also spoke at the Nov. 18 event.

"This week people from the U.S. State Department will be in Pakistan telling the leader of that country that you can't run an election under martial law," Lafer said. "You can't run an election where the opposition can't hold rallies, where you shut down the free press. But that same absence of free speech and atmosphere of terror is allowed in the workplace under NLRB rules," Lafer said.

Recognizing the impact of Blue Diamond's ongoing anti-union campaign, the panel decided to ask the company to sign on to fair ground rules for a union election.

"We believe the labor laws in this country need a thorough overhaul," Sen Steinberg said. "But for here and now, we recommend that an election be held with additional safeguards for fairness." The panel suggested that:

• the vote be held in a neutral location away from the plant, such as a school or church;
• union representatives have equal access to workers who will vote;
• both sides agree not to harass or intimidate voters;
• impartial monitors oversee the vote itself; and
• the parties should agree to community oversight of the whole election process.

The panel members agreed to send a letter to Blue Diamond with these recommendations, and report back to the community on the company's response.

The Nov. 18 forum was the first public event sponsored by Communities Organizing Support for Blue Diamond Workers (COS), which has been meeting since August. The 200 people at the event came from the Blue Diamond workforce and nearly two dozen unions and community groups. These included the Sacramento Central Labor Council, Sacramento County Democratic Central Committee, Sacramento Progressive Alliance, the Alliance of Retired Americans, UNITE-HERE Local 49, Communications Workers of America Local 9421, ILWU Locals 6, 10, and 17 and the ILWU's marine division, the Inlandboatmen's Union of the Pacific.

"Our political action electing a more worker-friendly Congress gave us the ability to influence policy,"said Longshore Legislative Committee Chair Max Vekich. "It doesn’t make sense to have public funds subsidize bad employers."

Blue Diamond has been getting subsidies under USDA's Market Access Program (MAP), which helps promote U.S. farm products overseas. California almond growers, like Blue Diamond, export some 70 percent of their crop. Almonds rank as the top specialty crop export from the U.S., by value, and California's top agricultural export. The Almond Board reports that worldwide shipments of California nuts have grown 11 percent in the last five years. With a record crop of 1.3 billion projected for this year, marketing is more critical than ever for the industry's future.

"We must effectively sell the benefits that almonds provide to consumers and to global food companies who are encouraged to develop additional new products," Blue Diamond CEO Doug Youngdahl said at the cooperative's last annual meeting.

Questions over Blue Diamond's right to subsidies came up in Congress during the debate over appropriations for agriculture, thanks to two pro-labor members. Rep. Phil Hare (D-Illinois) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), the chair of the subcommittee on USDA appropriations, had a formal conversation on the House floor.

"Would the gentlewoman [DeLauro] agree with me that the Secretary of Agriculture has the authority to deny serious labor lawbreakers taxpayer funds which are distributed under the Market Access Program?" asked Hare, a former president of UNITE-HERE Local 617.

"I too am concerned about the treatment of workers at Blue Diamond Growers," DeLauro responded, noting that MAP rules require companies to respect the laws of other countries when they hire workers overseas to market their products.

The exchange between the two, something known on Capitol Hill as a "colloquy," became part of the Congressional Record. Such colloquies affect the way laws get put into practice.

"After laws are passed, agencies have to write the rules to implement them," Vekich said. "The agencies look to colloquies for information on the intent of the legislation.

"This was a shot across the bow, saying there is a problem here to be fixed," he said.

The ILWU also gave direct input when the USDA held a hearing July 25 on changes to the rules governing MAP. The hearing drew a raft of agency staff but only a handful of groups wanting to make public comments. ILWU Legislative Director Lindsay McLaughlin got in line with the representatives of the poultry industry, the Wisconsin Ginseng Assn. and the Craft Brewer's Assn. to present the union's testimony.

"Companies that get public assistance should be required to act like good public citizens," McLaughlin said. "This issue is not just about Blue Diamond Growers, but an effort to ensure that the United States government is not putting its imprimatur on any company that violates the rights of workers."

Click here to read coverage of this issue that appeared in the Bee newspapers in Sacramento, Modesto and Fresno.

But they came with a serious purpose. They wanted the candy maker to use its power as a major purchaser of almonds from Blue Diamond Growers to urge BDG to sign a neutrality agreement with the ILWU. A neutrality agreement would help the workers at Blue Diamond make their own decision on unionization, free of threats and coercion.

"I'm third-generation longshore," said Fran Grove of ILWU foremen's local 94. "Everything I know is from the union, and I know how important it is. We're asking See's not to stand aside, but step up to the plate and ask Blue Diamond to do the right thing."

Women make up about half the workforce at BDG's Sacramento plant. Almost all the sorters and packers are women. This is the largest and lowest-paid group at the plant. Normally most of the sorters and packers get laid off for the summer. This summer they've found themselves working overtime instead, as BDG pushes to get ready for this year's bumper crop. No one from the plant was able to join the rally, but Gloria Hessel, a sorter, called in on her morning break and spoke to a reporter from the San Mateo County Times

Hessel gave the paper an earful about conditions in the plant. During the recent hot spell she had suffered heat exhaustion, she said, and other sorters were getting blisters from handling the heated nuts. Their eyes burn and they get nauseous when the plant is not properly aired out after fumigation.

"I'm ready to retire," she told the paper. "I'd like to finish with good conditions."

After the crowd marched and chanted for a while, a delegation approached the office with petitions to deliver to See's CEO Brad Kintsler. Hundreds of people had signed in person and on-line, asking See's to talk to Blue Diamond. A pinch-lipped See's security guard stonewalled their efforts. "Put the petition in the mail," he said. "Make an appointment."

In fact, the union had been calling and writing for months, but Kintsler had been unwilling to dialogue.

"So See's doesn't care to hear from the people?" said ILWU Local 94's Debra Pallares.

"You need to hear us louder?" asked Gail Ross from longshore Local 23. "We'll be back," she said, and the delegation and then the whole crowd took up the chant.

In his 20 years at the plant, Esparza had earned a reputation as an eager scavenger. He once drove out the gate with an old desk tied to the top of his car, and nobody said peep. But then in April 2005 he agreed to add his name to a letter to Blue Diamond that named him as one of 58 people on the organizing committee. He got fired in September 2005 for taking the weed-whacker out of the trash and putting it in his car.

Everyone knew Ludmila Stoliarova as a super-hard worker during her five years at Blue Diamond—but she was also known to wear bright union yellow and make no secret of her support for organizing. She got fired in May 2006 for taking home the empty boxes.

NLRB Administrative Law Judge Jay R. Pollack held a four-day hearing on the firings in January of this year. His May 31 ruling found Blue Diamond justified in terminating the two.

The ILWU is appealing Pollack's decision to the NLRB in Washington, D.C. Region 20 of the NLRB is appealing as well. (That's right. The ILWU and the NLRB are both appealing the judge's decision. Here's the chain of events: After the firings, the ILWU filed charges with the local office of the Board, which is Region 20. The Board investigated and found enough evidence to prosecute BDG, so it issued complaints. Attorneys from Region 20 represented the workers at the hearing on the complaints before Judge Pollack. The Region felt Pollack did not rule properly, so it is also appealing to Washington.)

Region 20 disputed 66 different omissions, interpretations and conclusions in Judge Pollack's ruling. The judge ignored the fact that "management did not enforce the Misappropriation Rule [under which Esparza and Stoliarova were fired] strictly and consistently," attorney David Reeves wrote in the Region's appeal.

"He did not make management prove "that the discharges would have taken place even absent the protected conduct they engaged in." And he failed to find that management's interpretation of its Misappropriation Rule was "dubious, far-fetched, and even comical….

"Given her [Stoliarova's] lack of awareness that Respondent [BDG] was seeking to apply the rule to used vendor boxes, the penalty of discharge for her unknowing offense is shocking," Reeves wrote. "Respondent seized this opportunity to rid itself of another potential 'yes' vote and another pro-union
voice at the plant and send the same message it sent with the discharge of Leo Esparza, and Ivo Camilo and Mike Flores in the prior case. Stoliarova's
case is similar to the employee in McLane/Western, who was sincerely bewildered when accused of stealing for eating a broken cracker from a crushed,
discardable case."

ILWU Organizer Agustin Ramirez and Blue Diamond worker Cesario Aguirre went to Spain in May to organize around Blue Diamond CEO Doug Youngdahl's appearance there. When Youngdahl addressed the World Nut and Dried Fruit Congress in Madrid May 12, some 30 Spanish union leaders and activists joined with the ILWU to add a little more information to his speech.

After the Congress, Ramirez and Aguirre traveled to Valencia and Barcelona to meet with members of La Coordinadora, the union that represents about 85 percent of Spain's dock workers. La Coordinadora hosted a press conference for them in Valencia May 14.

"We're not only here because of the Blue Diamond workers," said Julian Garcia, retired member of La Coordinadora and General Secretary of the International Dockworkers' Council (IDC.) "By helping the Blue Diamond workers, we're helping ourselves," Garcia said. "We're sending a message to our employers. If we are willing to do this for other people, think what we will do when it is our own struggle." Dockers, like workers everywhere, face increasing hostility from their employers, he added.

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Los obreros de BDG de la planta procesadora de Sacramento empezaron a sindicalizarse hace casi tres años para afiliarse al Local 17 del ILWU que agremia almacenistas. Ellos se han visto obligados a crear una amplia red de apoyo para hacer frente a los ataques de la compañía que les ha negado su derecho de sindicalización. Como BDG exporta un 70 por ciento de su producto, esta red incluye aliados en otros países. España es el tercer destino más importante de las exportaciones de la compañía.

En cuanto el ILWU supo que Youngdahl asistiría al Congreso Mundial del Consejo Internacional de Nueces y Frutas Secas (INC), se pusieron en contacto con los obreros de la estiba y los alimentos en España, con la ayuda del Departamento de Sindicalización de la AFL-CIO. Los representantes de la Confederación Sindical de Comisiones Obreras (CC.OO) y su Federación Agroalimentaria, la Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT), su sección de Transportes, Comunicaciones y Mar y su Federación Agroalimentaria respondieron al llamado, al igual que los activistas del sindicato independiente de estibadores La Coordinadora y la asociación de agricultores, Unió de Pagesos de Catalunya.

Unas 30 personas se congregaron en la conferencia del INC el 12 de mayo, viajando algunos hasta seis horas para llegar allí. Una vez que llegaron, algunos tomaron hojas volantes y se dispersaron por el hotel en el que se estaba llevando a cabo la conferencia. Otros lograron entrar en el salón principal de la conferencia sin que los vieran.

Exactamente a las 11:45 a.m., en el momento que Youngdahl exponía con monotonía ante una gráfica de la producción de almendras en California, ocho personas subieron al estrado y desplegaron tres pancarta. Una provenía de la Federación Internacional de Trabajadores del Transporte y una del TCM. La tercera llevaba los logotipos de todos los sindicatos participantes y proclamaba “Por la Organización Sindical y la Libertad en Blue Diamond”. Ramirez, el delegado del ILWU, explicó a los concurrentes en voz alta el inesperado giro de los acontecimientos.

“Las personas con las que trata el Sr. Youngdahl deben saber cómo maltrata a los obreros, necesitan saber que Blue Diamond es culpable de infringir las leyes laborales,” exclamó. Otros ocho activistas empezaron a repartir hojas volantes dento del auditorio.

“Al principio Youngdahl trató de ignorarme, pero se puso bien colorado y nervioso y luego se alejó del micrófono. La multitud se quedó tan sorprendida que se hizo un silencia sepulcral,” dijo Ramirez.

Además de participar en este acto el 12 de mayo, los sindicatos organizaron ruedas de prensa en Madrid y la ciudad porteña de Valencia, además de realizar numerosas reuniones con los visitantes del ILWU para establecer una red de conexiones con ellos. Haga clik en (en inglés) sobre las acciones en Madrid y aquí en sobre lo ocurrido en Valencia.