Blue Diamond Workers Win One at Home (guilty of more than 20 labor law violations last spring)

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2006/12/11/blue-diamond-workers-win-one-at-home/

Blue Diamond Workers Win One at Home

by Tula Connell, Dec 11, 2006

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.)

FULL story at link above.