PANNA: Support Banana Workers: Bring Justice to the Table

Support Banana Workers: Bring Justice to the Table

by Kate Mendenhall and Margaret Reeves

photo by Fairtrade Foundation Denise Southerland, a banana grower in St. Vincent, Winward Islands sells her bananas through the Fairtrade Mark, available in the UK.

Flawless bananas arrive on breakfast tables around the world, the majority of which are grown at the expense of the health and well being of tens of thousands of Latin American workers. The corporate-controlled international banana industry benefits handsomely through direct government support and government sanctioned exploitation of its largely migrant workforce.

Pesticide use on plantation bananas is more than 20 times greater than average pesticide use on crops in industrialized countries, with corresponding levels of worker pesticide exposures and illness. Banana worker unions in Latin America have taken a lead in exposing pesticide risks on plantations. In Ecuador, workers are engaged in a campaign that seeks compliance with international labor standards, including the right to organize and basic safety protections for workers. These organizations have turned to consumers in Europe and the U.S. asking them to buy fair trade bananas, and boycott Bonita bananas in particular. As more consumers use their buying power to "cast a vote" against environmentally and socially irresponsible corporate activity, buying "justice with your bananas" may be a new way to vote both for workers and against pesticides.

History: banana companies eliminate labor unions

The banana plant (genus Musa) originated in tropical regions of Asia and Africa and was introduced to the Caribbean by Spanish colonizers. Bananas were marketed to U.S. consumers in the late 1800s(1) and by 1899 the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita) was the largest banana trading company in the Americas, controlling plantations throughout Latin America.(2) "Banana Republics" became a code term for the Central American governments beholden to the income and the interests of United Fruit and the banana trade, which supplied bananas largely to North America and Europe.(3)

Initially, the foreign-owned plantations in Latin America brought in Caribbean workers because local residents were not willing to work in the tropical forests, where heat, malaria and other diseases created a high risk work environment. However, as forests were razed, infrastructure and services were improved and more jobs were created, local people joined the banana workforce. The diversity of workers and cultures on the plantations slowed early labor organizing but, after World War I, as the labor movement grew around the world, unionization developed more rapidly on banana plantations. In the 1920s and 1930s organized strikes occurred on plantations throughout Latin America, and by the 1950s most banana plantations in the region were unionized.(4)

After World War II, U.S. government support for the interests of international corporations in Latin America undermined banana worker unions. The 1954 overthrow of the popularly elected Guatemalan President Jacob Arbenez was attributed principally to U.S. efforts in support of the United Fruit Company, which opposed Arbenez's plans for agrarian reform, including redistribution of uncultivated acreage owned by banana plantations to landless peasants.

Also in 1954. a Costa Rican businessman named Albert Martén Chavarría, introduced Solidarity Associations (Solidarismo in Spanish), a new form of worker organization that became a successful union-busting program. Solidarity Associations required fewer members than unions (12 versus 20), could invest money (unions cannot), and could make agreements with employers on working conditions and wages that bypassed existing unions in the workplace as well as the collective bargaining process.(5) A Solidarity training school founded in Costa Rica during the 1970s played a key role in establishing Solidarismo in Costa Rica and other Latin American countries. Despite such advantages, in 1980, 93% of labor agreements in Costa Rica's principal banana-growing Atlantic region were still collectively bargained. Only 7% were covered under Solidarity agreements.

After two major strikes in the Costa Rican banana industry in 1982 and 1984, the government ratified the Tribunales de Trabajo, a system of special labor-related courts that dissolved unions and deemed them illegal. By 1986, Solidarismo had 70 full-time organizers and was established in all seven Costa Rican provinces and within 90% of banana plantations supplying transnational companies. By the fall of 1999, there remained only one Costa Rican union with a collective bargaining agreement, the Union of Workers of the Chiriqui Land Company (SITRACHIRI).(6)

During this time world banana production doubled (between 1988 and 1997). In response to global overproduction, banana companies began to cut costs and lower prices in a "race to the bottom" as the industry systematically closed plantations and cut jobs, wages and benefits,(7) eroding labor rights in banana growing countries throughout Latin America.

Banana Production on a Global Scale Largest Banana Exporters   % of world trade   Ecuador 18% Costa Rica 12% Colombia 12% Honduras 11% Philippines 11% Panama 9% Total 73%   Primary participants in the banana export market include the three major transnational corporations: U.S.- based Dole, Del Monte and Chiquita.

Banana production and pesticides

Of over 300 different varieties of bananas, the Dwarf Cavendish is the best known and most profitable. This seedless variety must be propagated by cutting and rooting a section of the mature plant, making all generations genetically identical. Thousands of plantations throughout the region grow fruit on genetically homogenous plants making the plantations particularly vulnerability to disease and pests.(8)

To control pest outbreaks in large-scale banana production, particularly for export where the market demands flawless appearance, plantations depend on high levels of pesticide use. In Costa Rica, at least 280 different pesticides are approved for use on bananas and an average of 44 kg/hectare/year of active ingredients are applied to bananas, compared to the 2.7 kg/hectare/year average for crops in industrialized countries.(9)

Pesticides are applied continuously throughout the ten-month growing season. Plantations aerially spray fungicides in up to 40 - 60 application cycles per season.(10) Workers use backpack sprayers to apply nematicides two to four times a year, and herbicides such as paraquat (see box) and glyphosate (a suspected carcinogen) eight to twelve times a year. Fertilizers are continually applied throughout the growing season.(11) Workers also place and remove plastic bags impregnated with the organophosphate insecticide chlorpyrifos over the maturing banana bunch. In the packing plant, workers cut and wash bananas in pesticide-laden water, and apply more pesticides (including fungicides thiabendazole, imazalil, or aluminum sulfate) to prevent "crown rot" during transportation.(12) Finally, workers package the bananas into boxefrequently without wearing protective gloves.(13) This intensive use of pesticides is extremely hazardous for workers.(14)

Marvin Amador from the Costa Rican Ecology Association and Friends of the Earth reports that "Generally, on the banana plantations there is no adequate control of transportation, storage, preparation, or application of pesticides... [D]uring the process of aerial fumigation, the workers are often in the fields or nearby homes. Areas with surface water are also often sprayed."(15)

Accurate records of pesticide related illness among banana workers are unavailable because, as is the case of agricultural workers worldwide, pesticide exposures frequently go unreported. A 2002 study of Central American pesticide illness estimated 400,000 poisonings were likely to occur each year in the Central American region, with nearly 5% of workers exposed to pesticides experiencing symptoms of poisoning.(16)

Studies conducted by the National University in Heredia, Costa Rica reveal that rates of pesticide poisonings are three times higher in banana regions than in the rest of the country. Increased incidence of sterility and cancers were also found among banana workers.(17) Other common illnesses likely related to pesticide exposure are allergies and pulmonary ailments. In a well-documented case, thousands of Latin American banana workers were sterilized as a result of exposure to the nematicide Nemagon (dibromochloropropane -- DBCP).

Environmental and social costs of banana production

Aerial spraying and pesticide runoff contaminate water used by workers, their families and nearby communities. Pesticide use has been responsible for massive fish kills, destroying an important food source and devastating surrounding ecosystems. In some areas, soil has become so infused with pesticides that it is now unfit for agriculture.

A 1993 - 1996 study on Costa Rica's Suerte River (which flows into Tortuguero National Park) examined the drainage ditches, packing plant effluent, near-by streams and the Suerte River for 11 pesticides used in banana production. "Fifty six percent of the water samples taken in Tortuguero contained propiconazole, which is moderately toxic for fish and fairly toxic for birds, and 25% of the samples showed a nematicide, either cadusafos or terbufos. Cadusafos is prohibited in Germany because of its high level of toxicity."(18)

As banana plantations have increased production, extensive forests, wildlife habitat and pasturelands have been razed to make way for bananas. In Costa Rica, the government has assisted this process by changing land use classifications to allow plantation production. From 1979 to 1992, banana expansion was responsible for deforestation of over 50,000 hectares of primary and secondary forest in Costa Rica's Limon Province.(19) Banana companies in the process of expansion pressure peasant farmers living on the plantation periphery to sell their lands. Farmers that resist are denied production supports such as credit, agricultural extension services and markets for their products. Farmers are also prohibited from producing traditional creole bananas in an attempt to avoid spread of the banana fungal disease Micosphaerella fijensis (Black Sigatoka). In these circumstances it is no surprise that many of these independent farmers become wage laborers on banana plantations.

A shortage of jobs and weakened or non-existent unions foster a climate of insecurity on banana plantations, where workers are vulnerable to exploitation and afraid to participate in union organizing. Job insecurity is exacerbated by industry practices such as subcontracting day laborers, extending the work day, eliminating collective agreements, unjustified firings (including for suspicion of union sympathy), contracting by piecework to avoid minimum hourly wages, and laying off workers before the end of the three-month trial period after which employers must provide benefits.(20) Workers are forced into a transient lifestyle where family stability is difficult to maintain. Job insecurity and poverty are frequently accompanied by malnutrition and poor health, which are exacerbated by a higher frequency of neurological and developmental problems among workers' children -- associated with exposures to pesticides in air, food and water. Poor health together with limited access to schools results in inadequate academic achievement among plantation children compared to their urban counterparts.(21) In this way, future generations face the same fate as their parents and the cycle persists.

Guatemalan banana workers face repression

In 1999, the Guatemalan banana workers' union, SITRABI (Sindicato de Trabajadores Bananeros de Izabal) reported that over 900 banana workers on the Bobos plantations were illegally fired and some workers were attacked in response to plans for a union walkout. Union workers were replaced by non-union workers who were paid less and received no benefits. Del Monte, the international corporation marketing Bobos bananas, was implicated in the attacks on workers. More than a year later, after enormous international pressure, the Guatemalan government brought the attackers to trial, resulting in the first convictions in modern Guatemalan history for violence against trade unionists. However, the attackers were allowed to pay fines instead of going to jail and unionists who spoke at the trial faced retribution and were forced into exile. Union members continue to be at risk.(22)

Ecuador banana workers campaign to improve working conditions

In recent years Ecuador surpassed Costa Rica as the largest banana exporter in the world, with an industry almost completely non-union and some of the region's worst working conditions and wages. The Ecuadorian-based company Noboa is the world's fourth largest banana company and owner of the Bonita brand.(23)

Workers on Noboa's Los Alamos plantations have been organizing for freedom of association as well as better wages, benefits and working conditions for over a year. They have also called on international allies to urge reforms in Ecuadorian labor law to comply with international standards, and to protect rights to organize and to collective bargaining. The campaign began after workers filed a request for contract negotiations that was approved by the Ecuadorian Labor Ministry. In response, Alvaro Noboa immediately fired all workers who signed the petition. On May 6, 2002, workers went on strike. Ten days later hundreds of Noboa's hired thugs attempted to violently evict the striking workers, injuring two dozen.(24)

Consumers called on to support Ecuadorian banana workers

As a top banana exporter, Ecuador's low wages weaken the position of unionized agricultural workers throughout Latin America as well as contract growers in the Caribbean. The National Federation of Free Peasants and Indigenous People of Ecuador (FENACLE), organizing workers on Alvaro Noboa's banana plantations, has called for a boycott of Bonita bananas.

The boycott is an effective way for consumers to both take action against hazardous pesticides and support collective bargaining. In the U.S., the United Farm Workers of America, AFL-CIO (UFW) led successful boycotts for head lettuce (1969 - 78) and table grapes (1965, 1973, 1987), both efforts spurred the first restrictions on the use of DDT, and laid the groundwork for a complete U.S. ban in 1972. The U.S. Farm Labor Organizing Committee led a boycott of Campbell Soup Company (major purchaser of tomatoes grown in the Midwest states) resulting in precedent-setting three-way negotiations among workers, growers and the corporations to whom the growers are contracted. In all three boycotts, issues of pesticide exposure and worker safety were central.

The U.S. Labor Education in the Americas Project (US/LEAP) is asking U.S. consumers to support the boycott by contacting the supermarket chain Costco, a major buyer of Bonita bananas, to request that the company find another supplier (the boycott applies to Bonita organic bananas as well). In addition to your request of Costco, please ask other local supermarkets to purchase something other than Bonita until the boycott ends.

Growing support fair trade bananas

Fair Trade Labeling Organizations International (FLO) has developed general standards which address both the environmental impact of production and fair conditions of trade. The fair trade label generally contracts with small growers or cooperatives to ensure a minimum price that covers at least the cost of sustainable production and provides a living wage. In addition, the label pays a fair trade premium, which is invested in the growers' communities for social and environmental development.(25) Because there are many certifying organizations with various standards, the FLO labeling, with its independent oversight and its community building efforts, is considered by many to be the "gold standard" of label certification.

Fair trade bananas are available in many European markets; almost 25% of all bananas sold in the United Kingdom and Switzerland are fair trade.(26) Although harder to find than in Europe, fairly traded bananas are also growing in popularity in the U.S. For example, in January 2004, Wild Oats Markets (a U.S. grocery chain selling natural and organic foods in 24 states) announced it would sell independently certified fair trade bananas in 70 of its 102 stores with plans to supply all of its stores by the end of 2004.(27)

In response to growing consumer demand, some top banana companies have incorporated some aspects of the fair trade standards on a portion of their plantations. Chiquita Brands reports nearly half of their bananas meet the fair trade guidelines of Social Accountability International, a group that certifies workplaces as humane. Dole has made plans with the FLO to certify some fair trade bananas sold in Europe, if not yet in the U.S.

Purchasing fair trade bananas sends a powerful statement to producing companies and supports small banana growers. To find out where you can buy certified fair trade bananas and other fruits, visit the TransFair USA website at http://www.fairtradecertified.org.

Kate Mendenhall is a Intern and Margaret Reeves is a Senior Scientist at PANNA.

US/LEAP's Suggested Action 1. Contact Costco Ask the company to stop buying Bonita bananas from the Noboa Company and find another supplier, one that respects workers' rights and complies with labor laws. Please send your request to: Mr. James D. Sinegal, CEO Costco Wholesale Corporation 999 Lake Drive Issaquah, WA 98027 Tel 425-313-8100 Fax 425-313-8103 2. Find Bonita bananas If you see Bonita bananas being sold elsewhere, a) ask the grocer to stop buying Bonita bananas, and b) let US/LEAP know of the store. Contact Alison Paul at 773-262-6502 or apaul@usleap.org. For more information regarding the boycott visit http://www.usleap.org/Banana/bananatemp.html.

Notes

1. Foro Emaús, 10 Years of existence of Foro Emaús: The struggle continues. (Limón, Costa Rica: Siquirres, 2002), p. 40.
2. S. May and G. Plaza, The United Fruit Company in America National Planning Association, Arno Press, 1976, p 6-7.
3. Ibid., p. 8.
4. D. Kepner Jr. and J. Soothill, The Banana Empire: A Case of Economic Imperialism, New York: Russell & Russell, 1935, 322.
5. Canada-Costa Rica Agreement on Labour Cooperation (CCRALC) "Labour Law in Costa Rica," Unpublished document, p. 22, http://labour.hrdc-drhc.gc.ca/pdf/pdf_e/labour_law.pdf, March 3, 2004.
6. Foro Emaús, 2002, p. 71.
7. U.S. Labor Education in the Americas Project (US/LEAP) website, "Banana Worker Campaigns," http://www.usleap.org/Banana/bananatemp.html. March 3, 2004.
8. Banana Link website, "Human and Environmental Costs," http://www.bananalink.org.uk/impact/impact.htm, November, 6 2003.
9. Foro Emaus, 2002.
10. C. Wesseling, B. van Wendel de Joode and P. Monge, "Pesticide-related illness among banana workers in Costa Rica: A comparison between 1993 and 1996," Int J Occup Environ Health 2001, 7: 90-7.
11. C. Martin, "Bananas -- The Facts," New Internationalist, October 1999, Issue 317, http://www.newint.org/issue317/facts.htm, March 3, 2004.
12. Ibid.
13. M. Gallagher and C. McWhirter, "Chiquita SECRETS Revealed," Cincinnati Enquirer, May 3, 1998, http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/chiquita/chiquita11.htm, March 3, 2004.
14. Banana Link, 2003.
15. Foro Emaús, 2002, p. 110.
16. Murray, D. et al., Surveillance of Pesticide-relted Illness in the Developing World: Putting the Data to work, International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, July/Sept 2002, Vol. 8 No 3.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid.
19. Foro Emaús, 2003.
20. Foro Emaús, 2002, p. 34, 70. International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations (IUF), "Tainted Harvest' - Human Rights Watch Report Reveals Child Labour and Worker Rights Abuses in Ecuador's Banana Fields" Posted, 25-Apr-2002. http://www.iuf.org/cgi-bin/dbman/db.cgi?db=default&uid=default&ID=296&view_records=1&ww=1&en=1
21. Foro Emaús, "Bananas for the World -- And the Negative Consequences for Costa Rica?" http://members.tripod.com/foro_emaus/2ing.html) 6 November 2003.
22. Ibid.
23. US/LEAP.
24. Ibid.
25. Fair Trade Labeling Organizations International (FLO) website, www.fairtrade.net.
26. B. Horovitz, "Market to sell certified Fair Trade bananas: Such socially conscious retailing on the increase," USA Today; 21 January 2004; pg. B.02.
27. Ibid.