Alvaro Noboa, Ecuador's Richest Man, Again Fires Banana Workers Organizing for Justice

Within 72 hours after banana workers filed requests for contract negotiations on June 20, 2003, companies owned by Ecuador's richest man, Alvaro Noboa, fired all the workers who signed the petitions. While the Ecuadorian Labor Ministry has declared that the June 23, 2003 firings improper, the government has no legal authority to require reinstatement of the fired workers. Noboa can instead opt to pay the workers severance and perhaps a small fine. The workers are nevertheless demanding reinstatement and have periodically blocked access to the plantations. The workers are being supported by FENACLE, the Ecuadorian campesino group leading banana worker organizing

The firings took place at the same Alamos plantations where last year workers undertook the first significant effort in years to organize banana workers in Ecuador, the world's largest exporter of bananas. Nearly 1,000 workers were on strike in May 2002 when they were violently attacked by hundreds of thugs, leaving nearly a dozen wounded, some by gunfire. After evicting the striking union workers, the company immediately brought in strike-breakers. A subsequent international campaign was unable to force Mr. Noboa to negotiate with the union and reinstate the workers but raised international attention on the need to reform Ecuador's labor laws to bring them into compliance with international norms.

Noboa Thumbs Nose at U.S. Congress

Despite significant international pressure, including continuing efforts by the U.S. government to link trade benefits to progress on worker rights in the banana sector in general and to progress in addressing the 2002 conflict Alamos in particular, Alvaro Noboa, shows no sign of moderating his anti-worker stance. (His bananas are marketed in the U.S. under the Bonita label.) The new round of firings came just a couple weeks after 30 members of the U.S. Congress urged the U.S. Trade Representative to take a stronger position with the government of Ecuador on the need to improve respect for worker rights in the banana sector. (Underscoring the company's defiance, Noboa's lawyers even had the gall to back-date the firings in an effort to avoid paying full severance.)

In a June 9, 2003 letter to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, Rep. George Miller (D-CA) and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) were joined by 28 other members of Congress (listed below) urging USTR to maintain and strengthen pressure on the government of Ecuador to reform its labor laws to allow workers to organize, to strengthen efforts to address child labor, and to bring to justice those responsible for the May 2002 violence against the Alamos workers. The letter noted that Ecuador had failed to abide by promises previously made to the U.S. government to address these issues and proposed that USTR set a deadline of August 1, 2003 by which some progress should be made or risk losing U.S. trade benefits provided under the Andean Trade Preferenceand Drug Eradication Act (ATPDEA). USTR has not formally responded to the Congressional letter at presstime.

Labor Law Reform Proposals

Last year, Human Rights Watch issued a report on the Ecuadorian banana industry, documenting child labor and widespread denial of the right to organize. Its key recommendations for labor law reform, backed by Ecuadorian trade unions, include the need to require reinstatement of workers fired for organizing, with back-pay, and the need to lower the threshold for the minimum number of workers required to form a union.

Current law requires a minimum of 30 workers. As if to illustrate the need for reform, the Alamos operations have in recent months been divided into dozens of legally-separate operations of less than 30 workers each, although the plantations employ about 1,000 workers in total. See the Human Rights Watch website (www.humanrightswatch.org) for a copy of their 2002 report, Tainted Harvest, and recent submissions to USTR detailing labor law reform proposals. USLEAP has also submitted specific labor law reform proposals to USTR, available upon request or on the USLEAP website.

High-Level Commission

Last fall, as part of an agreement with USTR that led to the granting of new trade benefits provided by ATPDEA, Ecuador also promised to set up a high-level commission to investigate both the criminal and labor cases at Alamos. The commission was not formed until February, however, and a final report has not yet been made public or provided to USTR. In any case, prosecution of the criminal case has been virtually non-existent. Government prosecutors have brought charges against 16 thugs only for an injury against a policeman while ignoring injuries suffered by a dozen workers, including one who ended up losing his leg. Criminal investigators did not even interview workers, and completely ignored one of the two attacks that took place on May 16, 2002, involving hundreds of thugs. Most importantly, there has no investigation of or charges brought against those responsible for bringing in the thugs.

Ecuador's banana sector is virtually completely unorganized, enabling employers to pay poverty-level wages and few, if any, benefits. As Ecuador has emerged over the past decade as the world's largest banana exporter, it has sparked a "race to the bottom" that threatens good wages and health, housing. and education benefits that have been won by unions in Central America and Colombia. Dole sources more heavily from
Ecuador than any U.S. company. Approximately 30% of Dole's bananas come from Ecuador; about 6% of Chiquita's bananas come from Ecuador.