Union-To-Union Programme

As the Covid 19 pandemic spread through Latin America last spring, trade unions representing plantation workers sought the implementation of measures to protect the health and incomes of workers, with the most beneficial measures for workers being negotiated in Colombia by Sintrainagro, which enjoys a level of membership and constructive relationship with the employers that is not seen in other banana producing countries. Meanwhile, in other countries, including Costa Rica and Ecuador, governments have used the pandemic to implement labour reforms introduce “flexibility” into the labour market, essentially allowing employers to cut working hours, pay and holiday entitlement without any compensation for workers.

Your donations have allowed us to offer material and financial support to unions in Latin American to fight for better protection for workers in the pandemic, as well as, for example, in Ecuador, the delivery of 1900 covid-19 pandemic food aid packages to workers and their communities by SINUTRABE.

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.

Following days of protests by Agricultural workers in late Autumn, the Peruvian government announced the repeal of a law that meant they did not share the same labour rights protections as workers in other industries, and enabled the exploitation of workers by agri-business firms. Banana Link has provided financial assistance to the agricultural union federation FENTRAIR to support them in leading the protests.

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.