The Importance of Ecuador

Ecuador is the largest banana exporter in the world. Its low wages and poor working conditions are dragging down wages and working conditions on unionized plantations elsewhere in Latin America. Therefore, raising wages and improving working conditions in Ecuador's banana industry is vital to maintaining decent wages and benefits of banana workers on unionized plantations in Central America and Colombia.

However, as documented in a Human Rights Watch report in April 2002, Tainted Harvest, Ecuador's labor laws have effectively denied workers the right to organize. 

The election of a new president, Rafael Correa, who took office in January 2007, and a new legislative assembly in 2007 led in 2008 to a new constitution and executive decrees that have begun to make it easier for workers to organize.  While wages have risen somewhat, however, few new unions have been able to secure contracts.  In November 2011, the International Trade Union Confederation issued a report finding that Ecuadorian workers "enjoy only limited rights" to organize and bargain.

The two most important companies operating in Ecuador's banana sector are Dole and Bonita. Bonita has a long history of opposing union organizing, meeting some efforts with violence.  Dole has generally been non-union in Ecuador until 2011 when it signed a contract with a 500-worker union at the Megabanana plantation.

Beginning in 2003, USLEAP, along with Human Rights Watch and the AFL-CIO, filed  petitions with the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) to enforce the worker rights provisions of U.S. trade law that condition U.S. trade benefits on Ecuador taking steps to improve worker rights.  Petitions filed in 2003, 2004, and 2005 were accepted for review and remain pending.