Ivo Camilo: No Raise in Seven Years

Ivo Camilo, an electronic machine operator at Blue Diamond Growers in Sacramento, Calif., describes his employer’s vitriolic anti-union campaign against Camilo and his co-workers.

Paul Pimentel from the Sheet Metal Workers, otherwise known as Paul VA, is blogging live today on the Employee Free Choice Act hearings now under way on Capitol Hill. The Employee Free Choice Act (H.R. 800), supported by a bipartisan coalition in Congress, would level the playing field for workers and employers and help rebuild America’s middle class.

Ivo Camilo, an electronic machine operator at Blue Diamond Growers in Sacramento, Calif., worked for the company for 35 years. As he relates it, “We’re fed up with watching us fall further and further behind. We had no raise in seven years and we are all at will employees with no protections.”

In 2004, they began organizing and in March 2005, went public with their desire to form a union. On April 15, 2005, the workers gave management a letter with the names of members of the organizing committee.

According to Camilo, “We told them we knew our rights and expected them to be respected.”

On April 18, Camilo was hurt on the job summarily dismissed. According to Camilo, “Two supervisors escorted me out like a criminal. By firing me, a 35 year employee, they sent a message to everyone else.”

The next week, the company asked for an immediate election, even though management had run a campaign against the International Longshore and Warehouse Union union for a long time.

They held more than 30 anti-union meetings and a lot of fliers were distributed. In those meetings, they threatened that the pension would be gone and they threatened a plant closing.

Camilo asked, “Who would have had a free choice after that?”

The company fired two more co-workers in June. An National Labor Relations Board administrative law judge found Blue Diamond guilty and the board took the unusual step of asking for an injunction. A hearing was set for May but Blue Diamond did not appeal the order so the injunction wasn’t needed.

A trial was set for May 2006 and the company hired Camilo back before the case went to the judge.

Last night, the board finished a second determination on the firings.

Camilo rightfully suggests, “We should not have to have this hardship and pay price for when employers break the law. Need more than just tougher penalties—one side has all the power. The employer has unlimited access to workers and workplace. That is why we need majority sign up.”

While he talked about feeling betrayed after losing his job, he seemed to maybe have been overcome with emotion.

A Cingular employee, Theresa Joyce, talks about how every 23 minutes a worker is fired or discriminated against due to the free exercise of their freedoms in this country. She relates:

I have two uncles who sacrificed their lives in World War II, I lost a cousin in Iraq, my daughter and my son in law are in the U.S. Navy—all to spread our freedoms abroad. It is outrageous and shameful when the freedoms they fight for are the same ones trampled on at home. Something is wrong with this country when workers are systematically seeing their rights violated every day.

Joyce talked about how when she went through an organizing campaign with her former employer, management employees were sent to meet with her and her co-workers, they followed and took photos of her and other union supporters during off-hours. Meanwhile, the union organizers they were meeting with were allowed nowhere near the workplace so they had to make an extra effort to go out and meet with the organizers.

Dale Kildee, a democratic Congressman from Michigan, describes the experiences his father faced when he was involved in an organizing campaign decades earlier:

When my dad joined the union he was being spied on by Pinkerton detectives. The coercion is more by far on the part of the employer. They used blackjacks when I was growing up, now they use briefcases. It has always been true and always will that they have greater power to coerce than a union.

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