Spanish Dockers Pledge Help for Blue Diamond Workers

Marcy Rein, a communications specialist for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Organizing Department, sends us this update on the efforts of workers to win a voice at work at Blue Diamond Growers.

The port cities of Valencia and Barcelona on the Mediterranean Sea handle more than 80 percent of the California almonds coming to Spain—and the dockworkers there stand ready to help the workers at the other end of the supply chain.

Blue Diamond Growers runs the largest almond processing plant in the world in Sacramento, Calif., and the workers there have been organizing for the past two-and-a-half years to join the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). Blue Diamond hit them with an aggressive anti-union campaign. They bounced back by organizing support all over, from their local community to worldwide union networks.

When the ILWU learned Blue Diamond CEO Doug Youngdahl would be speaking at the World Nut and Dried Fruit Congress in Madrid, they knew they had to be there. ILWU organizer Agustin Ramirez and Blue Diamond worker Cesario Aguirre traveled to Spain. On May 12, some 30 Spanish union leaders and activists joined them to let the nut industry know about Blue Diamond’s attacks on workers’ rights.

After the Congress, they traveled to the port cities of Valencia and Barcelona to meet with members of La Coordinadora, the union that represents about 85 percent of Spain’s dockworkers. La Coordinadora hosted a press conference for them in Valencia on May 14.

Says Julian Garcia, a retired member of La Coordinadora and general secretary of the International Dockworkers’ Council (IDC):

We’re not only here because of the Blue Diamond workers. By helping the Blue Diamond workers, we’re helping ourselves. We’re sending a message to our employers. If we are willing to do this for other people, think what we will do when it is our own struggle.

Dockers, like workers everywhere, face increasing hostility from their employers, he adds.

The two newspapers that cover the maritime industry attended the press conference, despite news competition from one of the qualifying races for the America’s Cup sailing event and from the feast of the Virgen de los Desamparados, the most important religious holiday in Valencia. Some 35 members of La Coordinadora attended. Representatives from the dockworkers’ unions UGT and CC.OO also took part. The Spanish unions have already begun contacting some of Blue Diamond’s key customers, asking them to use their influence to encourage their supplier to respect workers’ rights.

A visit with Unio de Pagesos, a growers’ association, brought home another facet of globalization. The members of the Unio grow all kinds of crops, including almonds. They pool their resources to hire immigrant farm workers. They sign contracts with these workers that include paid housing and health care, subsidized transportation and a minimum wage of 5 or 6 Euros per hour (about $6.75–$8.10).

Says Aguirre:

Almonds from Spain can’t compete in price with those from the U.S., even adding in the cost of transportation. The U.S. companies have low prices because of the way they are suppressing the wages and passing on the costs of benefits.

Unio de Pagesos’ health care payments go to the government, which provides care for all under a “single-payer” type system.

“In Spain, health care is a right,” Ramirez says. “When Cesario talks about employers passing the cost of health care on to workers, people say ‘What?!’ They’re shocked.”

Adds Aguirre:

Health care is a given. It is not an issue between employers and unions.

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