2009 Year in Review: Worker Organizing

Banana Workers Fight Dole, Talk with Chiquita  

Dole remained the top target of banana unions, with a new campaign document issued by European campaigners and USLEAP in October; in April, a lawsuit was filed against Dole alleging that it had funded paramilitaries in Colombia to murder trade unionists. Banana unions maintained direct engagement with Chiquita on a range of issues through mechanisms outlined in a framework agreement signed in 2001 with the  International Union of Foodworkers and the Coordination of Latin American Banana Unions (COLSIBA).  One issue burst into the public limelight in 2009 when the Honduran union requested international intervention, supported by USLEAP, that successfully pressed Chiquita to resolve a long-standing case of sexual assault.

Banana unions began to more publicly voice their concerns about certification by the Fair Trade movement and, even more so, by Rainforest Alliance.  Banana unions and their supporters, including USLEAP, prepared for the launch of a Global Banana Forum in Rome this December, an effort to bring together key actors in the industry to address a range of issues, including worker rights.

Flower Workers Defend Wins, Face Tough Times

This year proved to be a year of holding on to past gains as the economic downturn coupled with  anti-union  employers  combined to thwart progress.  Workers won a new  contract  at  the  Papagayo  plantation and preserved earlier victories, including renewing a contract at the Splendor plantation  previously  owned  by  Dole  before it exited the industry in early 2009.  The UNTRAFLORES flower union won backwages and full severance in key struggles but a number of plantations shut down and others used the economic crisis to expand subcontracting,  reducing  benefits, wages, and workers ability to organize.

USLEAP supported Colombian flower workers with a Mother’s Day tour, interventions with specific companies and the Colombian government, and production of a bilingual brochure and a new background booklet, Gendered Injustice: The Struggle of Women Workers in Colombia.

Huge Victory for Maquila Workers

Maquila workers won a huge victory in late 2009 when Russell Athletics agreed to open a unionized facility in Honduras, hire back hundreds of workers, and respect freedom of association at its Honduran factories, marking the most important victory in cross-border maquila work in Latin America in a decade. North American support work was led by the United Students Against Sweatshops after Russell closed a union facility in January 2009. USLEAP provided limited but strategic interventions at critical parts of the campaign.

USLEAP intervened with Johnson Controls in June at the request of its workers in Mexico who reported the company had not responded to a February letter reporting firings and other anti-union discrimination.   USLEAP’s intervention prompted a lengthy response from the company and the initiation of communication between the union and the company’s headquarters but as of November 2009, there was no resolution. USLEAP also provided modest support work to Hanes workers at the TOS Dominicana factory in the Dominican Republic wanting respect for a contract won in 2008 and to workers producing for Levi’s in Haiti where the company agreed to postpone plans to exit a unionized facility in the CODEVI free trade zone.