By Gilberth Bermúdez Umaña

Introduction

Banana production is one of the most important agricultural activities of our times. It involves millions of tonnes of fruit which is rich in nutrients, but which only creates wealth for a very narrow sector of our societies. Bananas are, however, produced by hundreds of thousands of people who do not always enjoy basic rights nor work in decent conditions.

The fruit is currently the object of heated debate involving the governments of consumer and producer countries, transnational and national companies, as well as trade unions and environmentalists. The latter are striving to change the conditions under which it is produced, to improve the effects it has on the environment and the quality of life of communities surrounding the plantations.

In the months leading up to the International Banana Conference, the Co-ordination of Banana Trade Unions in Latin America has been leading efforts to strengthen its member organisations which are found throughout our American continent where bananas are produced. The aim is to co-ordinate their efforts, both at the local and international level, as well as to prepare serious and sustainable proposals for solutions to the diversity of problems affecting the life of workers. We are also seeking to improve the terms of trade by proposing criteria based on fairness.

For this reason, we intend to use this important occasion to present the main challenges facing banana workers' unions: corporate strategies and policies, the difficult situation facing both male and female workers and the difficulties facing our attempts to organise free trade unions. We also want to present our major struggles as trade unions who have a responsibility for the future at a time of important transformations in the world.

The Principal Challenges Facing Banana Trade Unions

Corporate strategies and policies

Total Quality Management

The transnational banana companies have implemented innovations in the area of production such as "Total Quality Management", with the aim of obtaining higher yields. The concept includes plans for supposed participation of workers by inviting them to improve the quality and efficiency of production. Our experience, however, is that this strategy is reducing the quality of life for workers. In our recent meetings, we have had an opportunity to learn about and exchange perspectives on the effects of Total Quality Management on the lives of trade unionists and to see just how contradictory it is to the interests of workers.

We recognise the need for modernisation and the improvement of the economy, but we also see how the power of these companies is perpetuated when such methods are implemented, taking advantage of the immense creativity of our workers.

At the same time, a false sense of harmony in the workplace is created between management and workers by phenomena such as 'quality circles' which create a diversion from the conflict of fundamental interests and, by reducing union autonomy, have an indirect but dangerous effect on trade unions.

The subliminal intention remains hidden, but tends to focus workers' concerns on the productive system and, in reality, seems to be a way to reach the ultimate goal of maximising capital accumulation at the cost of an increase in unpaid labour.

Solidarismo

Another common strategy which has been imposed for the last two decades is Solidarismo. The management obliges the workers to join solidarista associations, which are a means of negotiating working conditions advantageous to the interests of management, but which totally limit the independence of the workers. Solidarismo directly impedes trade union organisation.

A globalising world: a challenge for the trade union movement

We are facing times in which the governments of our countries are making enormous efforts to open up their economies to international investment, striving to participate in a single market, while forgetting the repeated history of plundering -- the vehicle that industrialised countries have used to reach the level of development that they currently enjoy.

Globalisation is thus presented both as an "inevitable" modern tendency imposed since the fall of the Berlin Wall and as a tremendous technological revolution that various economic activities are experiencing internationally.

In the meetings that the banana trade unions have had over the last few years, we have seen how the laws of our countries are being changed in accordance with the requirements of the transnational companies and of international financial capital. We are living in a world where distances are being rapidly closed and communications are improving with amazing speed. This situation is familiar to the banana trade union movement as we note how companies exchange information and technology with the same speed that they undergo mergers, become part of financial conglomerates and lend each other managers and supervisors from country to country.

Thanks to the will of our leadership to unite and thanks to both national and international solidarity, we too have progressed in our efforts to become closer, to share experiences, to plan our actions strategically and improve our work of representing workers. We are using the technological resources in our reach to the best of our advantage. Although we feel that there is a long way to go, the results obtained so far demonstrate that we are on the right track.

That is why we say that if banana capital unites, we as unions can, and must, foster solidarity as organisations. It is with this in mind that we created the Latin American Coordination of Banana Workers' Unions, which has organised five conferences in the region. Important agreements have been signed with European trade unions and the work is coordinated with the network of organisations in Europe, EUROBAN.

The EU quotas and the potential of the banana market

In some countries, like Costa Rica, the allocation of a quota was advantageous to the companies as they obtained quotas that matched their export capacity. For the environment, the only positive effect has been to put a brake on uncontrolled expansion in certain areas and to limit the serious environmental damage caused by the polluting banana monoculture.

The fluctuations experienced by the industry were not as a direct result of the European policy of quotas. They have a major free market, operating according to supply and demand, in North America. There is also the news that China will begin to import more than 300,000 boxes of bananas from various countries in 1998, and will be buying 7% of Costa Rican production.

What is certainly a challenge for us is to develop fair trade, opening up a space in the market for an alternative production that favours and stimulates improvement in the quality of life of small producers, especially for those who produce bananas without the use of pesticides. It is for them that we do ask, even insist, that the international market is opened up much more; they must also be paid better prices and receive part of the returns from the marketing profits. In addition, the governments and NGOs of consumer countries should offer them genuine co-operation in the financing and technical training that will improve their economic, social and environmental sustainability.

One year ago, we set ourselves the task of working towards lobbying for the incorporation of social and environmental clauses into the banana trade to be discussed in the next big round of negotiations on banana quotas and tariffs. Since we became established as the Latin American Co-ordination, we have elaborated valuable proposals that we can now call on. There are existing international conventions supporting us, although these are not fulfilled at present.

The labour and social situation for banana workers

The employment situation

The banana growing regions of the majority of our Latin American countries are genuine enclaves where fruit is "assembled". In effect, the existence of a banana monoculture becomes the main source of employment for the economically active population of these regions. The younger people find themselves forced at an early age to enter employment in the plantations since, apart from the poverty in their homes, the education offered in rural zones is such that it denies them access to higher education in either the humanities or technical fields.

The most elderly workers, worn out from working, exhausted from having sacrificed their best years to the companies, are quickly replaced by young blood. The banana companies know that by doing so, they also disempower trade unions as they obtain cheaper labour with less union awareness.

The inhabitants of the banana zones live in subhuman conditions of poverty. Rather than increasing, banana workers' wages have been falling. For example, in 1993, working an eight-hour day in Costa Rica was equivalent to a monthly wage of $250. In 1997, for the same amount of work, the worker was receiving the equivalent of $187 per month.

Working conditions can be summarised as follows:

• long and exhausting working days of 12-14 hours or more, without any overtime payment;

• wages which are not sufficient to cover the basic needs of subsistence for a family;

• dismissals without any social security or redundancy payments;

• intensive use of agrochemicals which damage health and the environment;

• lack of medical attention;

• exploitative inter-personal relationships;

• lack of educational possibilities

It is for this reason that, as unions, we have to make greater efforts to educate and organise the younger workers, adequately meet their needs and try to raise their awareness of their own rights as workers.

The policies of deregulating labour being implemented by Central American governments aim to curtail the defensive capacity of labour organisations. This situation stands out more clearly in countries where there is wage bargaining and collective agreements. In view of this situation, the Co-ordination calls upon all its member organisations to close ranks in defence of union rights that have been won at the national level. We especially need to concentrate on those related to Social Security which are so threatened in these times of privatisation. We also need to co-ordinate our efforts so that the already ratified international conventions of the ILO are applied and fight in conjunction with the entire trade union movement for the ratification of those that are not.

Governments, especially through their Ministries of Labour, are constantly in meetings at the sub-regional level to modify labour laws. Their intention is to bring together all the measures that are favourable for the interests of transnational and national banana companies, as well as for other activities such as the maquiladora-style assembly plants.

Bilateral agreements to establish limited legal controls over foreign labour must be critically analysed by trade unions in conjunction with labour organisations working at the regional level so that we can be alert and ready to defend the all-too-costly rights that we have managed to win over the years.

The situation facing women workers

The situation for women workers is particularly hard, and they face exploitation and discrimination. The majority of women receive lower wages than men for the same work, and because of inadequate protective clothing when handling pesticides they suffer illnesses from the constant contact with toxics.

The majority are single mothers who have to leave their children without supervision during the long working days. Women do not have either the economic resources or the land, but they have the responsibility for feeding, clothing and educating their children. In the banana zones, there are no other work opportunities with which to supplement the family income.

The women are constantly exposed to sexual harassment by their supervisors, even by their own male colleagues. The woman worker has to put up with the attitude of her superiors for fear of being left without work.

Several labour rights relating to women workers are not respected in many banana companies, such as the right to maternity leave and to regular healthcare. They are also not allowed to freely join a trade union; if a woman does manage to join the union, she will suffer persecution in the form of, for example, being assigned heavier or worse-paid jobs.

From the beginning of our co-ordination activity as banana unions at the regional level, we have taken important steps towards integrating women in all the work of union organisation, as well as in diagnosing the serious problems that they specifically face and in searching for solutions to them.

The struggle of woman banana workers to get their voices heard in the union movement has been difficult, because they encounter a series of obstacles. The triple day as mothers, wives and workers makes it very hard to participate in meetings. Then there is the deep-rooted machismo of our men, coupled with the patriarchal and chauvinistic structure of our societies and of our own organisations.

A woman is not seen as capable of occupying executive posts or of taking decisions. Women in different countries have fought at national and regional level for women's secretariats to be enshrined in the statutes of the union, for women to participate fully in all activities and for women's issues to become known and to be debated throughout the union.

These efforts have borne fruit in some countries, as the emergence of women's departments, committees or secretariats testifies. In 1997, women from banana worker's unions organised the first Women Workers' Conference in Puerto Barrios, Guatemala. This is a sign of renewal and deep transformation in the life of our organisations, which have been reinforced, because the union now has organised women adding to its strength. Between the Conference held in San Pedro Sula, Honduras in 1995 and the Puerto Barrios Conference in 1997, we were able to observe, with great satisfaction, how the participation of women in the national delegations has enriched our work.

The process of integrating women into trade union work will continue: from training through to the participation of trained women in the governing bodies of trade unions and in collective negotiations with the banana companies.

Migrant labour

The situation is especially serious for migrant workers who, on top of finding themselves forced into displacement by violations of human rights (political and socio-economic), arrive in neighbouring countries and have to earn their daily bread by their own sweat. Banana production, especially during its recent expansion, attracted thousands of foreign migrant workers into the plantations. In the case of Costa Rica, they come mainly from Nicaragua and Panama; in the case of Belize, they come from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. These workers are subject to very arbitrary treatment by the authorities and to exploitation by the employer, and they have no access to basic services like health, education or housing. They live in virtual clandestinity and work without any social security cover whatsoever. They are paid less than nationals, and suffer even greater repression if they try to join a union.

At our IVth Conference, we exhorted the governments of Costa Rica, Belize, Nicaragua and Panama to respect the right to freedom of association and to ratify, and genuinely apply, the ILO's International Conventions which refer to migrant labour, as well as those which refer to freedom of association and to collective bargaining as set down in ILO Conventions Nos. 111, 87, 98 and 110. In this field, the banana unions of the various countries that use migrant workers have made efforts to educate them on the legal issues pertaining to each country and their rights as members of the same human race.

Health as a basic right

The improvement of occupational health in the plantations has been a constant struggle by trade unions throughout history. We are confronted by a model of production whose technical package is based on the indiscriminate use of poisonous -- even banned -- chemical ingredients. Most of these products used in banana plantations have been classified as highly toxic according to the classification of the World Health Organisation.

The residues of highly toxic pesticides are present in our lives, like the notorious DBCP which caused several thousand banana workers to go sterile in the 1970s. Other pesticides used -- nematicides, herbicides, insecticides and fungicides -- include Terbuphos, Ethoprophos, Phenamiphos, Oxamyl, Carbofuran and Aldicarb. These are organophosphates/-suphurates and carbamates which can easily cause acute intoxication. The use of another highly toxic chemical, paraquat (Gramoxone), is also common. The damage which these products do to workers' health includes burns and other skin damage, as well as lesions in the eyes and lungs.

Not only does the excessive use of pesticides cause a major impact to human health, but also it provokes pollution of soil, air, and of the surface and ground water.

The banana workers' unions have made considerable efforts to train ourselves to be able to adequately diagnose occupational health problems, so that we can incorporate relevant demands into any collective agreement, with a view to respecting existing laws and protecting the most valuable asset in banana production: the people who produce. We are increasingly gaining knowledge about national and international laws relating to restrictions in the use and handling of these agrochemicals. We are looking to form links with scientific, medical, academic and health organisations, both governmental and non-governmental, so that we can better analyse the acute and chronic effects of these pesticides on human health and on the natural environment.

The ultimate goal is always to phase out the use of these active ingredients completely, irrespective of their formulation, but we consider that our urgent, short-term aim must be to regulate and decrease their use. This is something that can be done in co-ordination with other organisations advocating workers' rights and with those working in solidarity with the banana workers' trade union movement in each country.

Environmental advocacy is an essential part of our work, a task that is greatly advanced when we work with other organisations based in the communities surrounding the plantations. This is quite logical, as the environment extends much further than the boundaries of plantations.

If banana companies carry out dangerous experiments risking the lives of workers, and considering the fact that the head offices of the agrochemical industry are in the industrialised consumer countries, we must urge NGOs and governments to put pressure on these companies so that they invest in research that will lead to a maximum reduction of their products' detrimental effects. They must also, within the terms of conventional trade, be required to take shared responsibility for these products until their end use in the plantations, including all legal requirements and adequate disposal of solid and liquid wastes.

If they partake in the profits, then they must also be liable for the social and environmental consequences that affect our countries.

Union organisation: challenges for banana workers' unions

Corporate anti-union policies

Currently, the banana companies are promoting models of labour organisation which permit them to make labour relations more flexible, to the extent of controlling them. At the same time they implement a series of unfair practices designed to prevent workers from organising into unions. These practices go from verbal intimidation against workers who show sympathy with the union through to threats to physical integrity of union leaders, sacking and subsequent 'black-listing' (an electronic list of unionised workers). As a result, it is fair to say that the freedom to organise trade unions does not exist. In countries like Colombia, trade union leaders have been victims of the violence on the part of private security forces, paramilitaries and guerrilla groups.

For the process of coordination at Latin American level, we can state that trade union freedom is a fundamental requirement if we are to become involved in protecting the occupational health and welfare of plantation workers and their communities.

Collective Bargaining

In our meetings, we have always considered the Collective Agreement as the main tool that trade unions have to regulate worker-employer relationships. In some countries, employers are working with their respective governments to break the unity of trade unions. There are also countries where this right has been snatched away or constantly denied, both in clear violation of human rights and of international law.

It is of great concern that job security and fair wages remain an important part of our Latin American workers' struggles; these are issues which we should be pushimng for regardless of whether we have collective agreements in place or not. It is clear that these rights are more protected when freedom of association, respect for physical integrity, trade union laws and more-or-less consolidated socio-political democracy exist.

In this sense, education -- an in-depth analysis of the elements making up the agreements and of national and international law -- is a fundamental tool in the defence of labour rights and their advancement under changing circumstances. This is especially true considering that there is a long list of those rights that are of an inalienable nature, such as the right to life and freedom.

It is a source of pleasure when unions sign agreements after tough negotiations, especially when real advances have been made. The most recent achievements in this area are in Nicaragua, and this in spite of a situation in which the banana plantation owners had laid off more than 3000 workers as part of the privatisation process, and had frozen or reduced wages. The ATC union was nevertheless able to secure the signing of collective agreements in five different plantations, allowing workers to negotiate better wages. We are equally pleased that in Costa Rica it has been possible to sign a framewprk agreement between Del Monte (BANDECO) and the union SITRAP in December 1997.

The right to freedom of expression

We give a great deal of importance to this line of work for the activation of trade unions in each country. We firmly hold that we have the right to inform and educate our plantation-worker members about the denunciations and proposals that derive from our organisations. In keeping with this, we have taken the responsibility of including the training and education of union members and organisers in the field of communications within our action plans. In doing so, we have taken advantage of our own past experiences, but we have also set out to acquire the necessary skills that modern technology offers, as well as to make the most of the work and solidarity of organisations that have made great advances in the field of mass communication.

In the majority of producer countries, the mass media is controlled by powerful interests, and since this is so, they close ranks around the companies, helping to discredit the struggles of unions and popular organisations, and their authentic leaders. One example is the million dollar campaign organised by the banana companies in Costa Rica in October 1997, in which they published press announcements countering the information that was coming from trade union sources in Europe.

It is for this reason that, in our sessions, we always try to learn from the experiences of our sister organisations about how to deal with the media and to disseminate our opinions more efficiently.

Some organisations have been able to develop and maintain important means of communication such as regular bulletins, newspapers, posters, radio programmes and the like. We have enough material to fill the contents of thousands of pages each month; for at the same time that we lack resources, we have no lack of initiatives.

The question is how to raise the quality of our image and, at the same time, contribute more frequently to national and international public opinion. We have made a lot of progress in this field, but we must tune our efforts better in order to fully gain the respect of our government authorities and of the companies. They must acknowledge and respect the rights that belong to us, as autonomous and free workers' organisations, to educate and inform banana workers and the general public.

We strive to promote the talents of our working people, adapting our messages to the new issues that oppress them, and we also strive to strengthen the promotion of their labour rights, using all the available means of communication, and broadening the focus from relations which are strictly linked to production and wages to others of an economic, social and cultural nature. We are doing this without forgetting our past, but while imagining creatively the new economic scenarios and the transformations which are occurring in the world of technical innovation, as well as in the world of values and principles.

Defence and promotion of human rights

The huge economic and social inequalities prevalent in our countries are dramatically reflected in the degree to which human rights are observed in our banana-growing regions. In fact, these are the regions that have the highest incidence of poverty and marginality. The old political parties make demagogic promises during election campaigns, but they later renege and "forget" to meet the needs of our communities.

We are witnesses to the enormous wealth created in conventional banana plantations, to the huge income that the central governments receive, but every day when it comes to improving infrastructure, we see how little is invested at the local or municipal level or in the quality of services.

We would need another chapter to adequately cover the levels of violation currently found in some countries, especially in those where security forces, paramilitary and even insurgent groups use violence against our communities, and against our union and popular leaders.

In almost any country any progress that is made in the democratisation process does not extend to the banana-growing regions, where impunity from the law and the violation of human rights is part of everyday life.This situation must change and we must, therefore, use our organisational capacity and unity to sit down at the negotiating table with government authorities, international bodies, and national and transnational banana companies to discuss the problems that exist in relation to human rights and, especially, labour rights -- an integral part of the former.

Banana workers' unions are now ready and willing to participate in such discussions as long as they are serious, and there is a genuine intention to identify and resolve the most important problems. They must start with a sense of respect for freedom of association and collective bargaining as they both form the basis of a true social and labour democracy, just as justice is the basis of real peace.

And, as the Costa Rican poet, Isaac Felipe Asofeiza, said, "although the future doesn't shine with many stars, it never gets darker than when the sun is about to rise".