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1 May 2008
This week marks six years since Ecuadorian banana workers producing Bonita (Noboa) bananas went on strike in support of humane working conditions. The violent response of the company and the ensuing efforts to form a trade union revealed that one of the biggest obstacles facing most of Ecuador's banana workers was that they were employed by sub-contracting companies, who were often no more than phantom companies designed to stop them claiming their rights.
Rural workers' and small farmers' federation FENACLE took up the issue
of labour sub-contracting and, after a campaign of over five years, has
succeeded in getting national legislation seriously curbing labour
sub-contracting through the new Constituent Assembly put in place by
the government of Rafael Correa. The text of the legislation, which was
approved on 30th April, is available to download in Spanish. Click here
to read the legislation. FENACLE President, Guillermo Touma, elected
to be one of the 130 members of the Constituent Assembly comments: 'Even
if we would have liked the law to go even further, we believe this is a
sure sign that the citizen's revolution is getting stronger by the day.
It is dedicated to the 19 workers who were injured in May 2002 at the
Los Alamos plantation because they dared to question exploitation."
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