Sound familiar? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Diamond - Walnut
Friday, June 18, 1993 | by Jim Hightower
Jim Hightower talking about the Diamond Walnut Company, which claimed in the mid-'80s to be on the Brink of Broke. So the country's largest processor of walnuts asked workers to take cuts . . .to save the company.
Represented by the Teamsters, Diamond's walnut processors accepted THE PAIN of a 30 percent pay cut -- with the understanding that they'd all share THE GAIN as times got better.
Well times are better in a big way at Diamond -- they've piled up more than $50 million in profits in the past five years.
Time to share the gain, right? Wrong. Not a dime.
With an arrogance bigger than several planets, the suits in the executive suites told the workers they'd even have to take another pay cut!
So people making about six-bucks-an-hour -- whose hard work and loyalty had pulled the company through -- were now being told, "Tough Luck, chump."
But those walnut processors had been pushed down as far as they were going, so Teamsters went on strike.
"No sweat," said the company, firing all 600 workers on the spot.
Then Diamond simply "replaced" these employees, hauling in unskilled people so desperate for jobs that they'd take these tainted ones ... and take 'em at minimum wage.
Diamond says striker-replacement is just hard-shelled business. I say it's nuts.
They can cut your wages, chop your benefits -- and if you complain -- put you on the street faster than a hog eats supper.
It's nuts for corporations, too -- destroying worker loyalty and any pretension that fairness exists between the powerful and the rest of us.
So nuts to Diamond. Nuts to striker replacement too. There's legislation moving through congress to outlaw this unfair, un-democratic, un-American, grab for greed by a few corporate bosses. Let's back it!
This is Jim Hightower saying, I'll be back tomorrow . . . if they don't replace me.
Sources:
Fortune Magazine - April 20, 1992
The San Francisco Weekly - "Labor On Diamonds Dumping"; 1992
http://jimhightower.com/node/1879
