Dole Food Company, Westlake Village, California, USA

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Dole, operating under the name Standard Fruit Company in some countries, is now the largest fresh fruit producing and trading company in the world, with just over one quarter of the world banana market. It is number one in the US and Japanese markets, number three in Europe. It grows bananas on plantations it owns or part-owns in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Ecuador, Colombia, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Ghana (since 2006) and the Philippines. Dole also buys from national producers in Ecuador, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and the Philippines. In the UK, Dole has a controlling interest in JP Fruit which markets Jamaican, Costa Rican and  - most recently - West African bananas. Dole also took control of the French Compagnie Fruitière in the 1990s. Dole is a company which claims to have high social and environmental standards. The company's own literature leads its readers to believe that it is one of the most advanced

corporate citizens when it comes to ensuring high labour standards and respecting the natural environment. The company claims that it respects the freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining, as guaranteed in the Constitutions or labour laws of the countries where it operates. However, in common with many other banana companies, there is little evidence to support these claims. Indeed, there are plenty of examples of the company’s unwillingness to allow independent public and trade union monitoring of the claims. One of the instruments in Dole's armoury for selling its bananas to customers concerned about such issues is the environmental management standard ISO 14001. Companies have been certified to this standard because buyers, initially in Europe, demanded it. However, the standard refers only to the management system in place within a company to identify potential environmental hazards. It says nothing about actual environmental performance. In fact, Dole is one of the banana companies with the worst environmental record. Not only has the company been implicated in avoidable pollution incidents, but there is evidence that the company has lobbied at least one government to weaken laws controlling the aerial spraying of fungicides.

Additionally, Dole plantations have recently been certified to the Social Accountability 8000 standard for all its operations, giving it another tool with which to convince importers, retail buyers and consumers that it is a champion of social responsibility.

Dole's smoke-screen of double-speak and certifications has convinced many who have no access to information about what happens on the ground inside plantations. However, nobody should be left under the impression that this is a company which welcomes free trade unions and collective bargaining as defined in international law. Nor should a few buffer zones along riverbanks and flowers at the entrance to plantations persuade the casual visitor that Dole is an environmentally responsible citizen.

In practice, Dole supports an anti-union policy in the plantations. Workers’ rights to organise in trade unions and bargain collectively are not mentioned in its Code of Conduct. Employees have to sign a written statement to say that they have been informed about the Code. At the same time, the company continues to lower production costs, putting wages and working conditions under pressure.

Two countries have become the centre of Dole’s activities in the banana trade: Costa Rica and Ecuador. They are countries with a notoriously low capacity or commitment to enforce their own labour legislation and fundamental labour rights. Dole is the second largest exporter from Ecuador (after Noboa) - a country where wages are low. Following a period of repression over the last two decades, trade unions have been all but eliminated in Ecuador, enabling companies operating there to take advantage of the low wages and lack of rights for workers. In 2002 and 2003, against the corporate trend, Dole acquired its own plantations in Ecuador for the first time.

In August 2000, Dole announced it would be reducing its purchases from national producers in Costa Rica by 25% and would not renew contracts for 2001. Then in October of that year, Dole announced it was laying off between 3,500 and 4,000 workers from its own plantations. As Del Monte had done in 1999, the company then offered to re-hire workers at lower wages and with reduced healthcare provisions and other benefits. There is not a single Dole farm in Costa Rica with a trade union agreement and persecution of workers who join unions is the norm.

The situation in most other countries in Latin America where Dole has plantations and/or sub-contractors is no better. Only in Honduras, are Dole-owned plantations unionised and with collective agreements. In Guatemala, the suppression of any attempt at union organisation is severe, especially on the Pacific coast where Dole sources large quantities of bananas. The violent threats against those who want to organise unions are constant. An unresolved labour conflict goes back to 1998, when trade union representatives were fired from the Dole plantations in the Caribbean coastal province of Izabal. It escalated into arrest orders against trade union representatives and the arrest of the legal adviser of the workers. Dole accused them of sabotaging production. The plantations were later sold off.

Dole has been blamed for numerous pollution incidents. In Costa Rica, for example, on 12 January 2003, 3,000 litres of Bravo 72 fungicide spread into the waters near the Bataan airfield, where the planes Dole and Del Monte use for the fumigation are kept. This pollution reached the Pacuare river and killed thousands of fish and other species that live in and feed from the river. It also reached the river mouth and seriously affected the coral reef along the Caribbean coast of the country.  For several years, the trade union SITRAP has collected information, evidence and witnesses to establish the responsibility of those who pollute. According to the union, the pollution was caused by a leak in a chemical product tank that belonged to Dole. A complaint against Dole was lodged in an environment court. After a year long procedure, a conciliation was arranged between the Ministry of the Environment and the multinational and an agreement was reached. In this conciliation, Dole undertook to pay 50 million colones (US$ 115,000 / slightly less than 100,000 euros) to restock the river and set up a system and measures to facilitate the prevention of these cases of pollution. However, the conciliation states nothing as regards the responsibility of Dole for the pollution of the Pacuare River. The company refused to admit its responsibility in that incident. Dole repeatedly declared to the media that it was exempt from any responsibility in that pollution incident, thanks to the conciliation, and that it “wished to support this initiative and reaffirm its commitment to produce in harmony with nature”.

In a written agreement proposed by SITRAP and then negotiated with Dole in 2005, the company was to modernise the Bataan airfield in order to prevent any pollution of the waters nearby. This agreement was presented to Dole in mid-2005, but the multinational never contacted the union again until a new case of contamination occurred on 22 November 2005, in the same area. The inhabitants of a village situated near the airstrip used for aerial spraying of the banana plantations alerted the authorities to an ecological disaster: a “milky liquid” had spread into the waters of the canal and several animal species were found dead. The first evidence collected on the spot by SITRAP showed that it could be Dole’s responsibility.

In the same year, the Madre de Dios river was contaminated, causing the death of thousands of fish. The research done by SITRAP led them to the Las Perlas plantations owned by Dole. Information on this incident and the possible responsibility for the toxic contamination was displayed on COLSIBA’s website. Dole immediately reacted and the head of the company’s legal department in Costa Rica wrote to SITRAP asking for the information to be removed from the site. The tone of the letter was threatening and intimated that a legal action against the union was possible.

The use of toxic chemical products is not only to the detriment of the environment. It also seriously affects the health of the workers who apply these products, their families or the workers who are in contact with the products on a daily basis in their workplaces. Dole is also the company most heavily implicated in the scandal of a chemical called DBCP, which was banned in the late 1970s in the USA (following an explosion at the manufacturing plant in California), then exported for use in banana plantations around the world. The company has already been ordered to pay compensation to victims in Nicaraguan courts, but has so far refused to accept the legitimacy of the Nicaraguan judgement. A generation on, workers are still struggling to get justice.

Further Reading

Dole, Behind the Smokescreen. An Investigation into Dole's Banana Plantations in Latin America.
This report provides a comprehensive background to the campaign detailing worker rights violations and environmental degradation on Dole owned and supplier plantations in Latin America (May 2006).
Available to download or hard copies from Banana Link

Dole Code of Conduct, Westlake Village, 2004

Ecological Footprint of a Dole Banana, University of Victoria, Canada, March 2002

KMU News Release: Dole Refuses to Issue Position on Collective Bargaining Agreement with Agricorp's Plantation and Cannery Workers.  June 29th 2006.

Websites

Dole (Europe)

Dole 

US/LEAP