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Chicago, Sept. 10 - Charging that Chiquita Brands International (Chiquita) is ignoring its responsibilities towards banana workers in Latin
America, dozens of U.S. and European human rights, environmental, labor and citizen groups today called on the company to meet with the workers' representatives who report new and ongoing human rights abuses that only add to the issues raised by the Cincinnati Enquirer exposé.
"Workers in Central America say the allegations in the Enquirer's Chiquita series last May represent only the tip of the banana," according to Stephen Coats, director of the Chicago based U.S./Guatemala Labor Education Project, US/GLEP. "They report deteriorating working conditions, 16-hour days, poverty-level wages and exposure to dangerous pesticides, and they have asked repeatedly for a meeting with Chiquita to address these concerns," Coats said.
"Chiquita has committed enormous time and money attacking the Enquirer investigation but has found no time to respond to 20,000 Chiquita workers whose representatives have asked for a meeting to address grave problems. The company seems more intent on killing the messenger than addressing serious worker concerns, " he added.
Today the U.S. groups released a letter they sent to Chiquita's CEO
Carl Lindner, expressing "severe disappointment" with Chiquita's failure to respond to three separate letters sent by the Coordination of Latin American Banana Workers Unions. The Coordination represents 20,000 Chiquita banana workers in Latin America.
Signers of the U.S. groups' letter to Carl Lindner include the Campaign for Labor Rights, National Labor Committee, Global Exchange, Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility, Ohio Citizen Action, the U.S./Guatemala Labor Education Project, and others.
To coincide with delivery of the letter to Chiquita, religious and human rights activists will stage a demonstration outside of the company's headquarters in downtown Cincinnati at 12 noon, Friday, September 11.
In Brussels, Belgium, Oxfam Worldshops held a joint news conference
Thursday morning on with other European groups .
In Honduras, Guatemala and Costa Rica, Chiquita workers are going public with their repeated and unanswered requests to meet with the company.
"We have observed with concern the worsening labor situation in your company's banana plantations, in particular the violations of human and workers' rights and of the freedom to organize trade unions, conflicts over collective agreements, abuses of working hours..." said German Zepeda,
Central American ("Coordination") union leader, in a July 22 letter to Chiquita.
In addition to the issues raised by the Enquirer, current Chiquita-related events that are causing alarm include:
Contaminated water: When workers sought an increase in their poverty-level wages and began to organize unions on Guatemalan plantations,
known as Arizona and Alabama, the employer fired the workers' leaders. When workers came to the defense of the leaders, the owner shut down the plantation, closed their kids' school, and stopped purifying the workers' water supply.
Workers say their children now suffer from a variety of diseases. Chiquita has an environmental charter that states its commitment to clean water. These plantations have supplied Chiquita with bananas for the past decade;
Lack of housing: On the Isa Grande plantation in Costa Rica, a Chiquita supplier, wages are poverty-level at about $27 a week, and workers
say they must spend four hours a day going back and forth to work because the owner refuses to build housing on the plantations;
Exposure to pesticides: Workers on plantations that have supplied
Chiquita bananas say that they use pesticides without protective gear and are subjected to aerial spraying while they are in the fields. This is despite Chiquita's efforts to distinguish itself from its competitors as an
environmental leader.
Denial of the right to organize: In Costa Rica the Chiquita union won 17 court rulings against the company because of firings and other discrimination against union members, according to a human rights group in that country.
"The Enquirer's' apology to Chiquita does not end the controversy over labor conditions on their plantations and those of their suppliers," said Rev. David M. Schilling, Director, Global Corporate Accountability Programs of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility. "The company must begin a dialogue with its workers. This constructive action will signal to religious investors and other groups concerned about basic worker rights that Chiquita is serious about addressing working conditions."
The U.S./Guatemala Labor Education Project, an independent non-profit
organization that supports the basic rights of workers in Guatemala
and elsewhere in Central America, recently persuaded Starbucks
Coffee Company to adopt and implement the first code of conduct
for a U.S. commercial coffee company.
For more information on the September 11 demonstration, contact
Sr. Alice Gerdeman, 513- 579-8547, or the Central America Task
Force, 513-244-9001.
For more information on activities in Europe, contact Alistair
Smith of Banana Link, at 011-44-1603-765-670 (e-mail of blink@gn.apc.org).
For interviews with the Coordination of Latin American Banana
Workers Unions, contact Stephen Coats at 773-262-6502.
U.S./GLEP
Tel: 773-262-6502; Fax: 773-262-6602
PO Box 268-290
Chicago, IL 60626
USA
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