The ILWU contingent crosses the Tower Bridge during Sacramento's Cesar Chavez Day parade. Marchers honored the UFW founder and shouted their support for the rights of workers and of immigrants--becoming part of a huge national wave of protest against anti-immigrant bills in Congress. Photo by: Marcy Rein.
By Marcy Rein
SACRAMENTO—With their yellow balloons bobbing in the wind, workers from Blue Diamond Growers walked proudly over the Tower Bridge in the César Chávez parade here. For them, the March 25 event marked an anniversary and a victory. They took their drive to join ILWU warehouse Local 17 public for the first time at the 2005 Chávez march. And after a rough first year, they got a firm decision from the NLRB backing their right to organize.
With Local 17 members beside them and the longshore Local 10 Drill Team stepping ahead, the Blue Diamond workers also became part of a huge national wave of protest. Millions of people took to the streets all over the country in a week of actions against anti-immigrant bills in Congress. Sacramento’s 5,000-strong parade far outstripped last year’s event. A million marched in Los Angeles, a half-million in Chicago, and tens of thousands of others in cities from Charlotte, North Carolina to Denver to Phoenix. Workers stayed home in Atlanta. Students walked out of high schools all over.
"Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you on this day for César Chávez," Blue Diamond organizing committee member Cesario Aguirre told the loud crowd at the rally after the march. "This is a day for the rights of workers," he said in Spanish.
Blue Diamond Growers (BDG) runs the world’s largest almond processing plant, employing more than 600 workers at the Sacramento facility. The organizing committee started off quietly in September 2004. People just had enough of flat wages, mushrooming health costs and trash-talking supervisors. Blue Diamond responded with what it called "an aggressive union avoidance campaign."
"Since we’ve been organizing, we’ve faced many obstacles," Aguirre told the rally. "The company has threatened us with closing the plant, they have spread fear, they have fired three people for supporting the union and divided the workers in the plant," he said.
Labor law bars such firings and threats, so the ILWU filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board. After a three-month investigation and a four-day hearing, the Board found Blue Diamond guilty as charged on almost all counts. NLRB Administrative Law Judge Jay Pollack ruled March 17 that Blue Diamond Growers should re-hire two of the three fired workers. He also ordered BDG to post a notice telling workers their rights under labor law, listing the ways it broke the law and promising not to do so again.
Pollack pulled no punches in his findings. He referred to management conduct as "suspicious" and "self-serving" and pointed out holes in their stories.
Organizing committee members took heart from the decision.
"Things are looking up," Eugene Esparza said while leafleting outside the plant a couple weeks later with Mike Flores, one of the workers the judge ordered BDG to re-hire. People smiled and took the information more readily than they did before, Esparza said. They greeted Flores with congratulatory shouts of, "Hey, Mikey, when you comin’ back?"
Blue Diamond has said they will appeal and not re-hire anyone yet, much to the committee’s disgust.
"They need to take responsibility for what they did and sign the judge’s order so we, the employees, can have our voice," Pat Senteney said.
As the Blue Diamond workers passed out their flyers and talked to others in the plant, the immigration debate kept raging in Congress and in the streets. One look at the crowd at the Chávez march told you this issue hit close to home. Once the morning rain stopped, people started streaming in. Families came with babies in strollers and teens in stocking caps and tattoos. Some people came with unions, churches and community groups, but many just showed up.
The lead banner said, "No on U.S. Bill HR 4437, Rep. James Sensenbrenner’s border protection, anti-terrorism and illegal immigration bill." The hand-markered signs said, "Working. Paying taxes. Not a criminal!" All along the way people shouted "Aqui estamos, y no nos vamos/ We’re here and we’re not going away." and the United Farm Workers’ "Si se puede!/Yes, it can be done!"
Sensenbrenner’s bill, passed by the House of Representatives in December 2005, would make people criminals for being in the U.S. without documents—or for helping undocumented workers.
"I’m a dispatcher," Local 17’s Everett Burdan said. "If I sent someone to get a job for a day, or a charity agency fed him, and he didn’t have documents, we could get thrown in jail."
The bill from Sensenbrenner (R-WI) also proposes to build 700 more miles of wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, for a cost of $2.2 billion, according to the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (www.nnirr.org). It offers no path to legalization and would overturn Supreme Court rulings against indefinite detention.
As Congress headed towards its Easter recess, immigration bills were churning through the Senate. A compromise was announced, then fell apart. Even the most liberal proposals included problem sections, like those permitting guest worker programs.
"Guest worker" programs create special visas for workers in certain occupations. The workers have to pay high fees for their documents and can only stay in the U.S. for a short time if they lose their jobs. The "bracero" program that brought farm workers to the U.S. in the 1950s set up a type of guest worker arrangement. Just as that program created obstacles to organizing farm workers in Chavez’s day, guest worker programs would hurt workers today, the AFL-CIO Executive Council noted in a March 1, 2006 statement.
"Guest worker programs lower labor standards and working conditions for all workers within our borders," the Council said. The AFL-CIO is actively lobbying on the immigration bills, and the ILWU is backing its efforts. International President James Spinosa sent a letter to U.S. Senators in January opposing HR4437 and outlining the union’s priorities for immigration reform. These include:
A path to legalization and documentation for undocumented workers who now live in the U.S., paying taxes and contributing to their communities.
Enforcement of workplace standards. "Lax enforcement of labor and employment laws gives unscrupulous employers an incentive to exploit immigrant workers and penalizes employers who abide by the law," Spinosa wrote.
Replacement of employer sanctions with a system that targets and criminalizes employers who recruit undocumented workers from abroad for economic gain.
"The ILWU itself was founded by an immigrant in 1937 seeking worker parity, regardless of national origin or race," Spinosa wrote.
"In 1997 the ILWU [International Convention] passed a resolution stating in part, ‘it is a well known fact that America is a land of immigrants and not made up of any one race, creed or color; and it is also a well known fact that under the United States Constitution all people are created equal and every citizen and non-citizen living in the U.S. has the right to be protected....’"
