Organizing Banana Workers for Social Justice and Environmental Sustainability:
An Interview with Gilberth Bermúdez

(iuf-uita-iul news bulletin 3-5/97)

SITRAP has recently become prominent for its role in initiating international legal action against US pesticide producers. When was the union established, and what are its principle activities?

SITRAP was founded in 1972. We organize on the Atlantic Coast, where the Dole, Chiquita and Del Monte companies operate together with Costa Rican and other foreign producers. There are 206 banana estates in this region covering 52,000 hectares, with a total of 52,000 workers altogether for an average of one worker per hectare. Only 5 percent of these workers are organized. Over 80 percent of the workers have no employment "record', that is to say they have been dismissed before they complete three months' service. Women account for 20 percent of all banana workers, and are mainly employed in packing; 80 percent of them are single women. About one half of the workers employed on banana estates are migrant workers; mostly Nicaraguan, whose status is that of illegal immigrants.

In SITRAP, we fight for every worker to be paid a decent wage on which they can live. We place special emphasis on this demand in collective bargaining. We also provide workers and their families with social support through projects (e.g. housing and collective social security schemes) in conjunction with state institutions. The social situation of banana workers in Latin America is extremely harsh. Their lives are contaminated by agrochemicals and marked by great pain. The working day is 11-14 hours and life expectancy little more than 40 years.

SITRAP has been one of the most dynamic and combative trade unions in the struggles of Costa Rican banana workers. We work in a number of different areas such as organizational development, education, the full involvement of working women, and the struggle for migrant workers' political and legal rights.

Our work on pesticides and agrochemicals is central to our struggle for occupational health and safety. Costa Rica uses more pesticides per hectare than any other country in Latin America. On banana plantations, almost 200 kilograms of pesticides are used per square kilometre, with serious consequences for workers' health. Banana workers suffer constantly from stomach, eye, skin and kidney ailments. Many of their children have died as a result of pesticide poisoning.

We have also suffered the after-effects of the massive application of dibromochloropropane, which was used extensively in Costa Rica during the 1970s and 1980s despite the fact that it was banned in the United States, its country of origin. [Dibromochloropropane (DBCP), a fungicide and nematicide, is a highly persistent and mobile pesticide on the "Dirty Dozen" list of the most toxic agrochemicals - ed.] In Costa Rica alone, 13,000 workers have been sterilized as a result of DBCP exposure, and altogether 30,000 people have been affected in the region as a whole. We are currently backing these sterilized workers' claims in the federal court system of the United States. However, the transnational companies are blocking this process in an attempt to get the US government to transfer venue to a court in our region, where compensation for the workers will be much smaller.

Other important areas of work for SITRAP are the defense of the environment and a campaign for the organic production of bananas. Banana production in the Atlantic region of Costa Rica is out of control and the ecological consequences are irreversible. Many forests have been destroyed, ground and surface water are polluted, and we have periodic flooding due to soil erosion and the diversion of rivers.

Costa Rica has a long democratic tradition yet you have frequently stated that one of your main problems is an absence of freedom of association and guaranteed trade union rights. Is this a country-wide problem or is it specific to the banana plantations?

Until 1993, there was no specific legislation guaranteeing freedom of association in Costa Rica. Since then, a law has been introduced that guarantees trade union rights, and a decision has been handed down by the Constitutional County obliging the government to implement Conventions 87 and 98 together with this law. However, nothing has changed. Although nearly all ILO Conventions have been ratified, there is no freedom of association in practice. Anyone who starts to organize a union is sacked and blacklisted.

The trade union movement is persecuted in every private-sector company in Costa Rica - in industry, commerce and construction. With the implementation of structural adjustment measures, the lack of freedom of association has also affected the public sector where the most senior trade union leaders have been dismissed. The public sector used to offer guaranteed job security.

Trade unions on the plantations have suffered savage persecution at the hands of the banana companies since 1986, and union action has declined as a result. In addition to black lists, companies do everything possible to stop workers from meeting and organizing. They refuse to deduct trade union dues, although this is compulsory under the law; they use security gates and para-military groups to prevent union leaders from entering the plantations; SITRAP offices have to operate outside the plantations, and we have to meet on Sundays, or days off, to organize union education. This situation is openly tolerated by the government, which has refused to ratify Convention 110 on plantations. We also encounter obstacles in the Ministry of Labour when we file complaints on freedom of association. These can take up to three years to settle.

Unfortunately, the ILO procedure for hearing and ruling on complaints is very slow, and it can be very late in the day when they are eventually resolved. When the Geest Caribbean case was finally settled, the company had disappeared!

Alongside repression, what is the role of "solidarismo", or yellow unionism, in fighting trade union organization?

Solidarismo is another major obstacle for the Costa Rican trade union movement. This very conservative movement was founded in 1947, and has received support from various governments over the years as well as from a section of the Catholic Church and the US Embassy in Costa Rica. It is pro-employer and has considerable financial resources. Solidarista organizations receive 5 percent of workers' monthly wages in addition to a substantial contribution from employers. Solidarismo substitutes for collective bargaining and the role of the trade union movement through the creation of in-house committees and agreements concluded directly with companies.

These committees do not demand pay increases and agree to a no-strike policy. They promote savings and consumer cooperatives, but have little to say on social issues affecting workers. The company manager or administrator is also a member of the solidarista committee. This structure serves the interests of transnational companies, and has been enthusiastically encouraged by the banana companies with their fiercely anti-union policies. All of this is tolerated by our government.

Solidarismo reached its peak in the 1980s, and by 1987 it could be said to have virtually taken over from the trade union movement on the banana plantations. The early 1990s, which saw the revival of trade union activity on the plantations, were the beginning of a new period in which the trade union movement started to compete for supremacy with solidarismo.

Costa Rica has traditionally stood apart from moves towards regional integration but the trade union movement has certainly encouraged an integrationist policy. You were one of the first countries to promote the Central American Coordinating Committee of Workers (COCENTRA) and the Coordinadora has succeeded in uniting banana workers' unions in the region. What is the role of these Coordinating Committees?

SITRAP supported the setting up of the Coordinating Committee of Costa Rican Banana Workers in 1990. This organizational advance in the Costa Rican trade union movement took place during the heyday of the popular movement in the Atlantic region, and was a response to the local struggles around freedom of association. The Costa Rican Coordinating Committee consists of three unions, with a total membership of over 3000.

The Coordinating Committee also participates in the struggles of Latin American banana workers, the origins of which go back to the 1920s. The Coordinating Committee of Latin American Banana Workers was founded in 1993 with our support. The Latin American Committee has more than 60,000 members and is made up of 43 trade unions in 7 countries: 17 in Guatemala (SITRABI and the National Union of Guatemalan Workers with 16 affiliated unions); 7 in Honduras; 1 in Belize; 12 in Nicaragua; 3 in Costa Rica; 2 in Panama; and SINTRAINAGRO in Colombia;

A Coordinating Committee of Honduran Banana Workers' Unions was founded in Honduras in 1994 as part of this unification process. The Coordinating Committee also maintains close links with banana workers' unions in other countries in the region such as Mexico, Ecuador and Venezuela, with a view to their taking out membership at a future date. There are a quarter of a million banana workers in the whole of Latin America.

Every two years, we hold a Conference of Banana Workers' Trade Unions which is attended by all unions which are members of the Coordinating Committee. The 4th Conference will take place in June this year in Guatemala. The Latin American Coordinating Committee, which is elected at the Conference, is responsible for directing and developing all activities. In addition, there is a Coordinator and Sub- Coordinator, and working committees dealing with education, finance and women's issues. These function in line with each country's priorities. Activities are determined according to the Committee's general development plan. Between Conferences, the Coordinating Committee holds working meetings every four months to implement agreed decisions.

The Coordinating Committee is a vehicle for building consensus in a complex situation. We are developing a common approach to the situation of banana workers through united and unifying action between unions in the region and between unions in a given country. The common ground for all of us is the need to confront the power of the transnational companies and the global banana market. We are having an impact in each country, and governments and transnationals have come to acknowledge the strength and range of our campaigning.

What are SITRAP's experiences of alliances with other sectors and with the international trade union movement?

At national level, SITRAP works through the Coordinating Committee to foster alliances with the entire trade union movement in the four main national centers. We also maintain close links with rural unions, and have established key relationships with NGOs and with the progressive wing of the Church. At regional level, we are members of COCENTRA and have promoted joint struggle and solidarity among banana workers with a view to defending their employment, their political rights and their future.

We are committed to strengthening international solidarity through our membership in the IUF, which we see as a relationship of mutual benefit, and we encourage unions in the regional Committee to join.

We also have links with a number of European and North American organizations working on fair trade and development issues.

We are currently organizing an International Banana Conference to take place in Brussels in May 1998. It will focus on international problems including production, marketing, agrochemicals, social rights, environmental problems and women's issues. We need to define very clearly what we understand by conventional banana production, organic production and fair trade in the banana industry, and what we mean by sustainable development.

Two secretariats have been set up to help organize the Conference: the North secretariat, which is run by Banana Link in England, and the South secretariat of which I am the secretary. The idea for the Conference originated in the Coordinating Committee a couple of years ago, and it was then taken up in Europe by trade unions, rural NGOs and the IUF, which is now a major part of the organizing secretariat.

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