The federal government wants to hand Blue Diamond Growers (BDG) a remedy reserved for the worst labor law violators.

Attorneys for the National Labor Relations Board went to U.S. District Court in Sacramento Feb. 21 to get a date for a hearing on a 10(j) injunction against BDG. (A 10-j injunction takes its name from Section 10(j) of the National Labor Relations Act.) When the Board seeks a 10(j), it asks the court to order an employer to immediately repair the harm it did when it broke labor law.

Such injunctions are extremely unusual. Regional offices of the Board have to ask the NLRB General Counsel in Washington, D.C. for permission to seek them. If the General Counsel approves the move, a majority of the five members on the NLRB in Washington must agree as well.

NLRB regional offices have only requested 355 10(j) injunctions since June 2001. They got the green light on just 70 of those. Over this same period, more than 138,000 unfair labor practice charges were filed with the Board.

"The 10 (j) is rare and getting rarer now that the Republicans are in charge at the Board," said retired ILWU attorney Bill Carder, who began his career at the NLRB in 1967. "The Board’s decision to seek one here reflects just how far over the line Blue Diamond went with its aggressive anti-union campaign."

Blue Diamond employs about 600 production and maintenance workers at its Sacramento facility, the largest almond-processing plant in the world. The workers there began organizing in September 2004 to join ILWU warehouse Local 17. BDG responded with a vicious anti-union campaign. The company fired four union supporters, threatened the workers with closure of the plant and loss of their pensions, hauled them into individual and group meetings and bombarded them with anti-union propaganda.

The union filed unfair labor practice charges with the Board, which issued complaints and held a three-and-a-half day hearing on them in December. The Administrative Law Judge’s ruling on those charges could come any day—but the company could appeal any part of the ruling it doesn’t like. For example, the judge may order BDG to rehire the fired union supporters, but the company wouldn’t have to do so while the case was on appeal. A 10(j) injunction would put those people back to work right away.

The hearing on the Board’s request for an injunction is scheduled for May 5.

—Marcy Rein