Blue Diamond Growers, along with the California Almond Board, has gotten more than $6.75 million in marketing subsidies from the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) in the last four years. This funding could increase sharply if parts of the proposed farm bill become law. But the ILWU wants Congress and the USDA to be sure labor law violators like Blue Diamond don’t share such gifts of public funds.

“Our political action electing a more worker-friendly Congress gave us the ability to influence policy,” said Longshore Legislative Committee Chair Max Vekich. “It doesn’t make sense to have public funds subsidize bad employers.”

Workers at Blue Diamond’s Sacramento plant have been organizing since September 2004 to join ILWU warehouse Local 17. The company responded with a nasty anti-union campaign that landed it in trouble with the law. A National Labor Relations Board judge found the company guilty of more than 20 labor law violations in March 2006 and ordered Blue Diamond to re-hire two union supporters it wrongfully fired.

Blue Diamond has been getting subsidies under USDA’s Market Access Program (MAP), which helps promote U.S. farm products overseas. California almond growers, like Blue Diamond, export some 70 percent of their crop. Almonds rank as the top specialty crop export from the U.S., by value, and California’s top agricultural export. The Almond Board reports that worldwide shipments of California nuts have grown 11 percent in the last five years. With a record crop of 1.3 billion projected for this year, marketing is more critical than ever for the industry’s future.

“We must effectively sell the benefits that almonds provide to consumers and to global food companies who are encouraged to develop additional new products,” Blue Diamond CEO Doug Youngdahl said at the cooperative’s last annual meeting.

Questions over Blue Diamond’s right to subsidies came up in Congress during the debate over appropriations for agriculture, thanks to two pro-labor members. Rep. Phil Hare (D-Illinois) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), the chair of the subcommittee on USDA appropriations, had a formal conversation on the House floor.

“Would the gentlewoman [DeLauro] agree with me that the Secretary of Agriculture has the authority to deny serious labor lawbreakers taxpayer funds which are distributed under the Market Access Program?” asked Hare, a former president of UNITE-HERE Local 617.

“I too am concerned about the treatment of workers at Blue Diamond Growers,” DeLauro responded, noting that MAP rules require companies to respect the laws of other countries when they hire workers overseas to market their products.

The exchange between the two, something known on Capitol Hill as a “colloquy,” became part of the Congressional Record. Such colloquies affect the way laws get put into practice.

“After laws are passed, agencies have to write the rules to implement them,” Vekich said. “The agencies look to colloquies for information on the intent of the legislation.

“This was a shot across the bow, saying there is a problem here to be fixed,” he said.

The ILWU also gave direct input when the USDA held a hearing July 25 on changes to the rules governing MAP. The hearing drew a raft of agency staff but only a handful of groups wanting to make public comments. ILWU Legislative Director Lindsay McLaughlin got in line with the representatives of the poultry industry, the Wisconsin Ginseng Assn. and the Craft Brewer’s Assn. to present the union’s testimony.

 “Companies that get public assistance should be required to act like good public citizens,” McLaughlin said. “This issue is not just about Blue Diamond Growers, but an effort to ensure that the United States government is not putting its imprimatur on any company that violates the rights of workers.”

—Marcy Rein