SACRAMENTO, CA—The Sacramento City Council has acted again to support the right of Blue Diamond workers to organize and join ILWU warehouse Local 17. The Council voted by 7-to-1 in early April to create an ad hoc committee that will try to meet with the company, workers, and union to develop an election process that would be agreeable to all.

    This marks the second time the Council has taken action for the Blue Diamond workers. At a packed and dramatic meeting on Dec. 5, 2006, the Council passed a resolution urging the company to sign a neutrality agreement with the ILWU.

    Blue Diamond management ignored the previous request from the City Council, along with pleas from concerned church and community leaders in Sacramento where the company has been headquartered for nearly 100 years. City officials voted to give Blue Diamond $21 million in public aid back in 1995 when the company announced plans to leave Sacramento.

    “We’re very happy with the Council’s latest decision,” Blue Diamond Organizing Committee member Carlos Saraiva said. “I hope now Blue Diamond will show some respect for the community leaders and the elected council members. I don’t ask them to agree at first, but at least they need to talk.”

    Last fall, a group of Sacramento activists formed “Communities Organizing Support for Blue Diamond Workers” (COS-BDW). COS held a public forum in November 2007 with a panel of eight political, religious and community leaders. After workers detailed the way Blue Diamond had violated their rights, the panel recommended fair ground rules for a vote on union representation. Panelists suggested that the election should be held at a neutral place such as a school or church, supervised by a neutral election monitor, and that both sides should have equal access to voters and promise not to intimidate them.

    The panel members sent a letter to Blue Diamond CEO Doug Youngdahl explaining the rules. Then they waited. And waited. Two months later, Youngdahl wrote back to one of the panelists, State Sen. Darrell Steinberg, saying a meeting with COS “would not be an appropriate forum to discuss this matter.”

    A COS delegation went to the plant March 13 to request a meeting in person. Youngdahl “was not in the office” that day, so Human Resources official George Johnson came out and kept the group—many of whom were senior citizens—standing in the cold as he smirked and promised to “convey their concerns” to the company CEO.

    Days later, some 500 members of M.E.Ch.A.(the nation’s largest Chicano student activist group) rallied in front of the Blue Diamond Growers plant during the group’s national conference. They took up chalk and paint to cover the pavement with drawings and messages of support for the Blue Diamond workers, and promised to take word of the almond workers’ union fight back to their home chapters.

    A few days following the student action, participants from Sacramento’s César Chávez march stopped for a brief rally at Blue Diamond on March 29. The hundreds of participants yelled and chanted and sat down briefly in front of the gift shop that sells almond products.

    Blue Diamond management has tried to prevent workers from learning about the growing community support for the union cause.  They shut the plant on Good Friday for the first time in recent history to prevent workers from seeing the M.E.Ch.A. student activists. They scrubbed away messages of support that had been “chalked” on the street by the students before the Saturday shift began.  And when the Sacramento Bee ran a report on the upcoming City Council vote, Blue Diamond officials removed all copies of the paper that are usually in the lunchroom.

    Management didn’t bother to send anyone to the April 1 City Council meeting, where Blue Diamond workers and community supporters laid out the case for fair ground rules.

    “We are grateful to the City Council for their support,” organizing committee member Ben Monarque said. “We want a free and fair election with a level playing field, making sure that both sides play by the same rules.”

    California State University professor emeritus Emmanuel Gale noted that Blue Diamond may be telling the City Council to mind its own business now, but the company was happy to talk with the City Council when it got its $21 million from taxpayers. 

    “We’re appalled by the arrogance of Blue Diamond,” said Chris Jones of ACORN, which organizes and advocates for low-income families around the country. “I was part of the panel that wrote the letter of concern to Blue Diamond and they wouldn’t even answer us. ACORN is here to support the Blue Diamond workers because we’re all part of our community that deserves more respect.”

    Sacramento Central Labor Council Executive Secretary-Treasurer Bill Camp underlined the importance of holding the election in a neutral place. When he worked for the California state agency that ran union elections for farm workers in the 1970s and ’80s, he insisted that ballot boxes be set up in the fields.

    “Where you put the ballot box is key,” Camp said. “Freedom of association has no meaning when workers feel they’re under the power of the boss. This is about who we are as a community. We want a community where everyone participates.”

    When Sacramento City Council members held their own vote on the new Blue Diamond resolution in early April, the behavior by Blue Diamond management was apparently a factor.  One Council member who had voted against the first resolution in 2006 decided to support the new effort.

    “Having the kind of dialogue my colleague is suggesting can only be helpful,” Council member Robert King Fong said. “We have a responsibility to the employer and the employees at Blue Diamond to try to help resolve this situation.”

– Marcy Rein