The Banana Crisis
The banana industry has been experiencing a major crisis in recent years where worker’s rights are being greatly undermined and child labor is continuing to be a popular source of cheap labor. The crisis in banana production is attributed to many factors. Among them are; the saturation of the market, general undermining of worker rights, particularly the right to organize and bargain collectively, the use of child labor and natural disasters.
Recently, companies have faced pressure from their investors to cut costs because of falling banana prices and stock values. Also as a result, companies have been forced to roll back union gains that are the result of years of collective bargaining. Since 1998, unions throughout Central America have had to challenge firings, plantation closings, contract renegotiations, spurious civil suits and criminal charges against union leaders. One major cause of the downfall of the banana industry in Central America was the 1998 destruction of crops by Hurricane Mitch, where 85 percent of Honduras’ banana crops were destroyed. This forced banana unions to renegotiate collective bargaining agreements and accept open-ended suspensions of many members.
Ecuador is the world’s largest banana exporter and supplies approximately 25 percent of the bananas eaten in the United States. The U.S. based company Dole, is the second largest banana exporter in Ecuador and obtains the largest percentage of its bananas from Ecuador. Unfortunately, unlike in other banana exporting countries, workers in Ecuador are almost completely un-unionized. Women, who did not start working in banana production until six years ago, now constitute 20 percent of the packing-plant workforce and on average make less than men.
Health concerns and child labor are also major problems in the banana industry. When there is aerial spraying of the fields, workers must leave the fields and remain away for at least two hours after it stops. Unfortunately, workers on many plantations continue to work through the spraying or must return immediately after spraying is completed. Also, workers are not given any safety equipment while being exposed to chemicals used to disinfect and clean the bananas prior to packaging.1
The most vulnerable to these health code violations are child laborers. In Latin America an estimated 42 million children from ages 5 to 14 have been working in recent years. "Pressures on businesses to be efficient and profitable are often passed on to the world’s most vulnerable population, its poorest children." Since bananas earn 30 percent less today than a decade ago labor codes are greatly undermined. Because of economic strife, families are forced to send their children to work, even at the expense of discontinuing their education. These children are forced to work in the fields under extremely hazardous conditions for very little or no pay. According to a report by the World Bank, 55 percent of Ecuadorian children do not attend secondary school. These children must work in order to provide food and shelter for their families.
2The National Association of Banana Growers states, each 43-pound box of bananas purchased in Ecuador is purchased by exporters for $2 or $3 but goes for $25 in the U.S. or Europe. Despite the surplus in banana production, profit is being made but this profit is being made at the expense of worker and children’s rights.
Action:
Please urge U.S. based banana companies to take responsibility and restore rights for the workers and children of Central and South America. For more information about this issue you may contact the U.S./Labor Education in the Americas Project at (773) 262-6502 or visit their website at www.usleap.org .