Union-To-Union Programme

Costa Rican union SITRAP and the Latin American union federation COLSIBA to which it is affiliated have formally denounced a series of labour violations and illegal hiring practices at two farms belonging to national company Grupo Acón. Fruit from these farms on the Costa Rican Caribbean coast is supplied to U.K. consumers via one of the country’s largest retailers. Banana Link understands the retailer is taking the matter seriously and has already initiated talks with their supplier and local workers union, SITRAP.

The pledge to ensure living wages by the end of 2027 represents a major step forward for the banana industry, writes Alistair Smith, International Coordinator at Banana Link.

Banana Link partnered with ALDI SOUTH Group and ALDI Nord in the first pilot to explore the role that trade unions can take in the verification of living wage data. The pilot was undertaken in 2022, with independent mediation from Heartwood LLC and the participation of Dole, Grupo Iren and Banafem in the first project of its kind to be undertaken in the banana industry.

Adela Torres, General Secretary of Colombian agricultural workers union SINTRAINAGRO, was elected as the new Coordinator of Latin American banana and agro-industrial trade union coordinating body, COLSIBA in late 2021. Adela will be the second woman to hold the post that represents workers in the highly male-dominated Latin American banana industry.

Banana Link is coordinating a women’s empowerment and leadership training project in the Dominican Republic, which was launched in late November 2021.

The project will see a core group of 10 women workers and small farmers – from across the three main banana exporting provinces of the country – receive intensive leadership and empowerment training across a broad range of topics encompassing non- violence and harassment, Dominican labour law, certification policy and international standards, personal finances and digital literacy and communication skills. Once this first phase is completed, the training will be rolled out to a much larger group of women on Dominican farms and plantations using a ‘training the trainers’ methodology.

In a move that is to be congratulated, and which hopefully sets an example for other supermarket chains, the UK’s largest retailer Tesco, has today announced a commitment to paying the living wage gap to banana producers, writes Banana Link Policy & Communications Coordinator, Paul Lievens.

Your donations have helped us to support capacity building and training for SITRAP, which has seen its membership growing at a rate of over one new member par day, while they have been able to secure new Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBA) at two Del Monte plantations. Funding has also enabled online communications training for union representatives and provisions of masks to members in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. They have also succeeded through legal efforts in getting 16 unfairly dismissed workers reinstated in their jobs in 2020.

Additionally, the union has been particularly successful in recruiting women members this year, because the Women’s Officer and the Executive Committee have made this a top priority by providing services that are highly relevant to women in their workplaces, childcare during all meetings, and by encouraging family members of worker members to participate in union events.

We have supported training workshops on labour issues, gender equity, health & safety, measures to prevent the spread of the TR4 fungal disease, Covid-19 and collective bargaining for the new independent union SINUTRABE in Ecuador, as well as support to SITRABI in Guatemala to organise education and training for plantation workers in several districts of the Pacific South, the source of one in every three bananas consumed in North America.

Late last year, Hurricane Eta hit Central America, causing devastation to the banana producing regions of Northern Honduras and the Izabal region of Eastern Guatemala. Plantations suffered the effects of torrential rain, flooding and battering winds, and plantation workers homes, often situated within the plantations themselves, were also damaged, along with the roads that connected them to nearby towns.

With thousands of jobs at risk, and little or no state help for those who lost their homes, workers in Guatemala and Honduras have received support from their local unions in the form of basic food packages (pictured), with enough rice, beans, oil and other necessities to support a family for a month. Many are relying on this support, and that of other charitable and religious institutions, to survive, while they wait to find out if they can return to their homes and jobs, or not.

Banana Link has provided financial support to the Fako Agricultural Workers Union following attacks on plantations by militant Anglophone separatists resulting in the majority of banana plantations being closed down and the union struggling to survive.