BC unionists joined convention delegates and guests in marching on a local Safeway. While some people kicked off a rally in the parking lot, others took the action right into the store. Safeway sells the Blue Diamond products, so the marchers asked the supermarket chain to urge the almond processor to change its anti-union ways. Photo by: Lewis Wright.
by Marcy Rein
VANCOUVER, BC—The clerk at the Robson Street Safeway seemed quite flustered. At just about 1 p.m. on Tuesday, May 16 a crowd of people burst into his store. They marched down the aisles holding sun-yellow balloons and shouting, “I-L-W-U!” He moved to bar the door, but there seemed to be 300 of them at least and many were bigger than him. Another couple hundred people gathered in the parking lot. What was going on?
The ILWU’s 33rd International Convention had recessed to take action in support of a key organizing drive, marching on the Safeway store to enlist that supermarket chain’s support for the workers at the Blue Diamond almond processing plant in Sacramento.
The British Columbia Federation of Labour and ILWU Canada laid the groundwork for the march and parking lot rally, which anchored the second International Day of Action in support of the Blue Diamond workers. Affiliates of the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) fired up other solidarity actions around the world, giving the delegates a glimpse of what global cooperation could produce.
As unions try to shape their strategies to today’s realities, the need to “organize along the global supply chain” has come to the fore. The ILWU is looking at organizing where exports are processed and shipped, and organizing where imports are stored and sorted for distribution.
“The rail, road and dock unions are identified for special attention because of the industrial leverage we have in globalization,” Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) National Secretary Paddy Crumlin told the Convention. “We have to identify those that are identifying us, the retail giants in collusion with the manufacturing giants, the logistics and transportation connections between their businesses, the mining and maritime services they require. We have to organize every part of that chain.”
This puts a new twist on the ILWU’s history of international work.
“We’ve always been connected internationally,” ILWU International Vice President Bob McEllrath said. “Because the world has shrunk and the world economy is so much more connected, the connections we have internationally are now helping us organize locally.”
McEllrath opened the organizing section of the Convention agenda May 16, then turned the program over to Organizing Director Peter Olney. After the briefest of introductions, Olney asked the Oxbow Carbon and Mineral workers to take a bow.
The workers at Oxbow, a bulk petroleum coke shipper in the Port of Long Beach, had just ratified their first contract as members of ILWU Local 13-A. They surprised Olney and the officers by presenting plaques to the International and the Organizing Dept. with thanks for their support over a year and a half of organizing and bargaining.
Then three workers from Blue Diamond took the stage. They put faces to the stories ILWU members had been hearing for months and made the reasons for organizing come alive.
“One of our co-workers, Cesario Aguirre, had a bad accident a couple years ago,” Ann Hurlbut told the crowd. “A piece of equipment fell on his head and hit him so hard his eyeball popped out. He was out of work for more than a year. When he came back, he lost his eligibility for medical benefits and paid time off, even though he had been at Blue Diamond for more than 20 years.
“We work hard, we’re honest and we give 110 percent even though we’re treated like crap,” she said, holding up a picket sign à la Norma Rae. It read, “Respect for hard work is all we ask.”
Larry Newsome described Blue Diamond’s efforts to intimidate and divide the workers and turn them against the union. The company fired, spied on and questioned people, threatened them and tried to mislead them. Some people are scared, he said, but the organizing committee has stayed strong.
“My brothers and sisters at Blue Diamond are making demands that a change must come,” Newsome said. “When they kick us, we come together and become more like super-glue. The more they strike us, the stronger we grow. We know if we walk in our own destiny we can make Blue Diamond come around and do the right thing.”
The workers have already seen gains from their organizing, Randy Reyes said. Blue Diamond raised wages and lowered the number of hours people need to work to get paid time off.
“We know these things can all be taken away until we get them in a contract,” Reyes said. “What can’t be taken away is the learning and growing we’ve done as we organize. We’re gaining in maturity as a community of workers standing up for what is right.”
(Left to right) Singer Heidi Archibald capped the rally at Safeway with a rousing version of "Solidarity Forever," backed up by Blue Diamond workers Randy Reyes, Ann Hurlbut and Larry Newsome. Photo by: Lewis Wright.
Over the last year and a half, organizing committee members have talked to co-workers, community members and political leaders, testified at the State Capitol and the NLRB, rallied, marched and talked with international union allies.
“People all over the international community have been involved with us and we are grateful for their support,” Reyes said as he introduced ITF Dockers’ Section Secretary Frank Leys.
ITF affiliates all over the world took action on behalf of the Blue Diamond workers in November 2005 and again around the ILWU Convention, Leys said. In the recent wave of actions, the All-Japan Seamen’s Union wrote to Blue Diamond’s Tokyo office. The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) wrote to Blue Diamond CEO Doug Youngdahl denouncing the company’s anti-union activities. The KCTU also promised to bring the company’s labor rights record into negotiations over a U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement. (Blue Diamond has asked that duties on almonds imported into Korea be dropped).
At the ITF’s “Ports of Convenience” conference in Manzanillo, Mexico the week before the Convention, delegates from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Argentina, Peru and Brazil signed on to a letter to CEO Youngdahl as strong as that sent by the Koreans. The Maritime Union of New Zealand held stop-work meetings April 27 and resolved to write to Blue Diamond as well.
Australian unionists went all out in support of the Blue Diamond workers, as Crumlin showed in a PowerPoint presentation. Australian Council of Trade Unions President Sharan Burrow sent a letter to Blue Diamond herself.
More than 1,000 people signed on to an MUA petition for the Blue Diamond workers. MUA members all over the country passed resolutions and sent letters of support, among them the crew of the MV Goliath, who faxed their handwritten words of encouragement via the Sydney MUA branch.
Working with the Rail, Tram and Bus Union, the Transport Workers’ Union and the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, the MUA held rallies in Sydney and Melbourne in front of Scalzo Foods, a Blue Diamond customer. Ten minutes into the action in Sydney, Scalzo managers agreed to send a strong letter to Blue Diamond.
“They’ve taken away our right to strike and even our right to organize in Australia,” Crumlin said. “That’s not going to stop us from supporting the Blue Diamond workers with every fiber, with every capacity within our hearts, our minds and our souls. This is not a dispute about Sacramento so much as it is about every worker,” he said.
With that, the Convention recessed for the march to Safeway. Some 500 delegates and guests, along with members of the BC Fed, took over Robson Street, one of Vancouver’s main shopping drags. Pedestrians gave thumbs-up and passing trucks blared air-horns in solidarity. When the marchers reached the store, about half the crowd pushed inside.
The others yelled and cheered as unionists from Canada, the U.S. and around the world mounted the portable sound-stage lent by Teamsters’ Local 31. Speakers included ILWU International President James Spinosa and Vice President McEllrath, ITF General Secretary David Cockroft, BC Federation of Labour President Jim Sinclair, Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union Secretary-Treasurer Chris Banting, and COPE representative Andy Ross. Sinclair announced that the BC Fed would follow up the day’s action by directing all its affiliates in the food industry to contact Safeway on behalf of the Blue Diamond workers.
Fired up by this foray into the streets, the Convention delegates passed six organizing resolutions. The most far-reaching of these put the union on record in support of a New March Inland in Southern California. It directed the International and particularly the Southern California locals to tackle the vast non-union warehouse and distribution industry there, focusing on companies where the union can have strategic leverage. To carry out this new work, the Southern California locals are to create and fund a regional organizing committee that can work with the International Organizing Dept.
“Right now in organizing we don’t have the resources we need to go where we need to go,” said Peter Peyton from marine clerks’ Local 63, who made the motion. “If we don’t take on this piece, we will lose in our end game. This is one of the two most important things the union needs to do.”
Members will need to understand what this process entails, McEllrath stressed.
“People think, ‘where’s your organizer, send him out,’” McEllrath said. “It’s not just walking into a place and saying, ‘Here, sign these cards, you’re organized.’ It takes the help of the locals and the rank and file, and these days it is also a worldwide project.”
