Education & Empowerment

Bananas constitute the fifth largest export earner for Cameroon, while Ghana has only developed a commercial banana and pineapple industry in the past couple of decades. Both countries export to Europe, mainly to France and the UK.

Workers on plantations in both countries suffer from low wages that don’t meet their basic living costs, causing poverty and leading many into spiraling debt, while working long hours in hazardous conditions, with poor protection from illness and injury.

Initial project

To address these problems, between 2013 and 2016, Banana Link worked with General Agricultural Workers Union of Ghana (GAWU) and the Fako Agricultural Workers Union (FAWU) in Cameroon to educate and empower workers and their unions to negotiate living wages and improved conditions on banana and pineapple plantations.

Research conducted in both countries during the project demonstrated measurable benefits in five important aspects of workers’ lives: income, working hours, labour rights, work-related accidents and provision of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).

Continuing activities

Following the initial project, Banana Link has continued to work with the International Union of Foodworkers in Africa to empower workers, including improving and increasing women’s employment and rolling out training on the Banana Occupational Health & Safety Initiative (BOHESI).

In 2013 just over one third (35%) of workers in Ghana earnt enough to meet their basic household needs. But GAWU has been able to negotiate pay increases which have seen average monthly take-home increased from GHC 198 in 2013 to GHC 380 in 2015 – an increase of 92%. More than half of workers (54%) now report that their wages are sufficient to cover the costs of daily necessities such as food, housing, utilities and their children’s education, and identify that it is wage increases negotiated by GAWU that have increased this capacity to cover household costs.

Meanwhile, in Cameroon, over the three year period the proportion of workers able to cover their monthly expenditures has increased from 23% to an estimated 40%. This is primarily due to the successful renegotiation of the National Collective Agreement on Agriculture which increased the basic wages in the sector by 20%.

In both countries, the unions have delivered financial management education to enable workers to better handle their limited incomes, resulting in informed workers borrowing money at lower at lower interest rates.

Banana and pineapple workers in Ghana in 2013 worked on average 48 hours a week, despite a legal maximum of 40 hours. By 2015, this figure had dropped to a much healthier level of 37.5 hours a week, with most workers not now exceeding 8 hours a day.

Similar successes have been made in reducing the amount of unpaid overtime. In 2013, 89% of workers believed that overtime was compulsory and were unclear about whether additional preparatory work constituted employment. The majority of workers now receive payment for overtime.

FAWU has not been as successful in reducing employees working hours in Cameroon which remain high, with workers averaging 66 hours a week in peak season.

However FAWU estimate that 75% of workers at the main employer, CDC, now benefit from earlier finishing times of 6 or 7pm which the company has committed to extending to all of its farms.

As a result of education project in Ghana 66% of workers are now aware of at least one of their labour rights, as opposed to 28% at project start. Nearly 80% of workers attended a GAWU meeting or workshop in Year 3 of the project. GAWU’s goal now is to ensure that 100% of workers know their rights.

The educational workshops in Cameroon have also been very effective in increasing workers’ awareness of their labour rights. In 2013 the union estimated that only 1 in 4 workers knew their rights but by the project end two thirds of workers interviewed could name at least one of their rights at work. During the project an additional 2,500 banana workers joined FAWU, many as a direct result of the education programme.

More than 10,000 workers participated in education during the project from informal sessions run by their peers in the field or packhouse – or in the trucks on the way to work – to workshops to better understand the company rules, labour laws and collective agreements relevant to their daily lives on the plantation.

The provision of appropriate equipment is essential in order to protect workers from hazards. Poor quality or incorrectly sized PPE can lead to trips and falls, chemical burns, cuts, and skin conditions.

Great progress has been made Ghana in ensuring PPE is now provided with 97% of workers reporting receiving PPE across the 4 plantations surveyed. Improvement can also be seen in the number of workers who have to use their own resources to purchase and repair PPE which dropped over the period from 40% to 25%. Despite these achievements, 60.5% of workers still report that the PPE they receive is insufficient.

Before the project began in Cameroon, provision of appropriate PPE was low, with only 35% of workers reporting receipt of adequate PPE, which has now increased to 74%.  The priority over the coming years will be to ensure that workers receive appropriate replacement PPE regularly.

Of the 74% receiving PPE, only 30.7% received appropriate replacement PPE in the last twelve months. It is significant that now 95% of workers know that exposure to chemicals is dangerous and detrimental to their health and 72% have spoken with a FAWU representative about health and safety in the last year.

At the end of the three year programme, hundreds of union representatives have been trained in both countries. Employers and the union report significantly enhanced social dialogue.

External evaluation has mapped and celebrated the ‘Journey of Change’ that representatives have undergone; women in particular feel more confident to speak with both management and members and are now equipped with the skills and knowledge to successfully handle grievances in the workplace.

Both unions have been trained to deliver future courses to representatives and empower them to raise awareness amongst workers of their rights and how to secure these through their unions.

Banana Link is working to continue to support GAWU and FAWU to educate and empower workers and their representatives to deliver tangible benefits in the working and living conditions of the tens of thousands who depend upon the banana and pineapple export industries in Ghana and Cameroon.

This is a summary of the evaluation report of ‘Securing Decent Work in tropical fruit export production’; a three year project funded by Comic Relief. The General Agricultural Workers Union of Ghana TUC (GAWU), the Fako Agricultural Workers Union (FAWU), the International Union of Food Workers (IUF) and Banana Link delivered this project in Ghana and Cameroon.

The project worked towards two outcomes:

• educating and empowering workers to negotiate living wages and working conditions; and
• building the capacity of the union to engage in dialogues with national and international
  supply chain actors.

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