Blue Diamond Workers United

Mike Olivera came to the community forum for the Blue Diamond workers Sunday, Nov. 18. He showed up, because that's who he was. Ever since he decided he'd been wrong to fight the union, he'd been one of the steadiest members of the organizing committee.

"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.

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