The Importance of Ecuador

Ecuador has become 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 effectively deny workers the right to organize. Ecuador's labor law is significantly short of international standards. Key issues include the lack of effective sanctions for employers who fire workers for organizing, no requirement to reinstate workers fired for organizing, and extensive use of temporary and contract workers to avoid labor law requirements for permanent workers.

The two most important companies operating in Ecuador's banana sector are Dole and Bonita. Recent efforts by workers to organize to improve wages and working conditions have been defeated through a combination of employer resistance, weak labor law, and even violence.

Banana workers in Ecuador have called for a reform of Ecuadorian labor law to bring it into compliance with international standards, especially with respect to protecting the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively.

USLEAP, Human Rights Watch, and the AFL-CIO have been actively pushing for labor law reform in Ecuador since 2002, urging 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.

Ecuador has promised several times to address worker rights concerns with respect to its labor code but has not done so, except to pass a law in 2006 ostensibly restricting the ability of employers to use subcontractors to prevent workers from organizing. However, the law has huge loopholes.

The election of a new president, Rafael Correa, in 2006, and a new legislative assembly in 2007 led in 2008 to significant changes in labor law that has begun to make it easier for workers to organize. 

USLEAP has no specific action on Ecuador to propose at this time.