Blue Diamond Workers United

By Tula Connell, Dec 11, 2006 - Originally posted to AFL-CIO Weblog

Photo Credit: Katy Fox-Hodess

Marcy Rein, International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) communications specialist, sends a great example of how hard it is under current labor law to win the freedom to sign on with unions through a majority verfication (card-check) process. Over the weekend, organizers from throughout the AFL-CIO union movement discussed strategies for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would require employer neutrality and majority verification. Here, Rein describes the ultimately successful efforts of workers at Blue Diamond Growers in Sacramento, Calif., to win approval by the Sacramento City Council to go through the majority verification process in deciding whether they will join the ILWU.

Really, it seemed the Sacramento City Council would never stop droning on at its Dec. 5 meeting. It plodded through parking meter contracts, stadium restoration, intermodal site acquisition.

The boredom ground hard on the 40 Blue Diamond Organizing Committee members in the room. Day shift had started at 6:30 a.m., and they knew they had to start at 4:30 the next morning.

But in the past two years, they have taken their fight to join the ILWU all over the state and the world, and they were determined to see their hometown City Council vote on the resolution supporting their efforts.

The measure calls on Blue Diamond Growers (BDG) to sign a neutrality agreement with the ILWU and condemns the almond co-operative’s nasty anti-union campaign. The National Labor Relations Board found Blue Diamond guilty of more than 20 labor law violations last spring. The company never admitted it did anything wrong. The NLRB issued more complaints against BDG in October and is investigating more charges filed by the ILWU in November.

“It’s simple,” Blue Diamond Organizing Committee member Randy Reyes said.

We have a set of rules to follow at work. Blue Diamond has a set of rules to follow, too, called the labor law. They need to be accountable.

The resolution came up last month, but council members agreed to postpone their vote so Mayor Heather Fargo could meet with Blue Diamond management. The delay gave the company time to call out its troops and work on its spin. The Dec. 5 council session turned into a showdown between business and workers’ interests.

An editorial in Sacramento’s daily paper the day before scolded the City Council for “telling the company how to handle its internal labor relations.” AM-radio talk show host Tom Sullivan made nice with Blue Diamond’s head of PR, while he fumed about “ ‘The Union’ marketing its services and trying to bypass the pro-employee policy of secret-ballot elections.” (He never dignified the ILWU with a name and spoke in scathing generalities about The Union.)

Blue Diamond got the spin going in the plant as well, circulating an anti-union petition and mobilizing workers to attend the City Council meeting. Rows of people dressed in company blue alternated with rows of folks in sunny union yellow. The numbers seemed almost equal—though many of the blue shirts were leads and supervisors. Blue Diamond also brought out the heads of the local and state chambers of commerce and its own CEO Doug Youngdahl.

It seemed at first the meeting wouldn’t go well for the union supporters. Council member Robbie Waters tried to scuttle the resolution, claiming the city had no jurisdiction. His motion failed.

The head of the Metro Chamber got up and ran the usual warnings about Sacramento being tarred as “unfriendly to business,” and Youngdahl got up and waved the flag:

The bottom line is that we will not give up our workers’ right to a secret-ballot election. It’s a fundamental American right.

Council member Kevin McCarty didn’t fall for that. He reminded listeners of the recent history.

You can’t deny that Blue Diamond violated the National Labor Relations Act. We’re talking about a card-check neutrality agreement, and the third word is the important one here. You can’t have a fair vote without it.

Mayor Fargo offered a watered-down compromise resolution. That failed. And on the final roll-call vote, the council voted, 6–3, in favor of the original proposal. The council chamber erupted in clapping and cheers of “Si se puede!”

Cheers broke out again at 4:30 the next morning, when the workers in their yellow shirts gathered in the cafeteria before their shift started and celebrated some more.

“It was awesome,” Organizing Committee member Gloria Hessel said. “I didn’t think we’d get this far with all that’s gone on. We’ve tried so many times to talk to them across the street, and we never hear back. We need a voice.”

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