From: Evan Weinberger (weinbee@hrw.org)
Date: Thu Apr 25 2002 - 15:04:11 EDT
Ecuador: Widespread Labor Abuse on Banana Plantations
Harmful Child Labor, Anti-Union Bias Plague Industry
(New York, April 25, 2002) -- Banana workers in Ecuador are the victims
of serious human rights abuses, Human Rights Watch charged in a new
report released today.
In its investigation, Human Rights Watch found that Ecuadorian children
as young as eight work on banana plantations in hazardous conditions,
while adult workers fear firing if they try to exercise their right to
organize. Ecuador is the world’s largest banana exporter and the source
of roughly one quarter of all bananas on the tables of U.S. and European
consumers.
Banana-exporting corporations such as Ecuadorian-owned Noboa and
Favorita, as well as Chiquita, Del Monte, and Dole fail to use their
financial influence to insist that their supplier plantations respect
workers’ rights, the report found. Dole leads the pack of foreign
multinationals in sourcing from Ecuador, obtaining nearly one third of
all its bananas from the country.
“The Ecuadorian bananas on your table may have been produced under
appalling conditions,” said José Miguel Vivanco, executive director of
the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch. “Banana companies have a
duty to uphold workers’ rights. Ecuador is obligated under
international law to do so.”
The use of harmful child labor is widespread in Ecuador’s banana
sector. Researchers for the Human Rights Watch report, Tainted Harvest:
Child Labor and Obstacles to Organizing on Ecuador’s Banana Plantations,
spoke with forty-five child laborers during their three-week long
fact-finding mission in Ecuador. Forty-one of the children began
working between the ages of eight and thirteen, most starting at ages
ten or eleven. Their average workday lasted twelve hours, and fewer
than 40 percent of the children were still in school by the time they
turned fourteen.
In the course of their work, they were exposed to toxic pesticides, used
sharp knives and machetes, hauled heavy loads of bananas, drank
unsanitary water, and some were sexually harassed. Roughly 90 percent
of the children told Human Rights Watch that they continued working
while toxic fungicides were sprayed from airplanes flying overhead. For
their efforts, the children earned an average of $3.50 per day,
approximately 60 percent of the legal minimum wage for banana workers.
Chiquita, Del Monte, Dole, Favorita, and Noboa have all, at some time,
been supplied by plantations on which children labored, with more than
70 percent of the children interviewed saying they had worked on
plantations that almost exclusively supply Dole. When Human Rights
Watch asked Dole to confirm or deny its business relationship with these
suppliers, it refused, claiming this is “business proprietary
information.” Dole’s web site states, “Dole does not knowingly purchase
products from any commercial producers employing minors.”
“Banana-exporting companies may tell you they’re not responsible for
labor abuses,” Vivanco said. “But they have financial power and could
use it to ensure respect for workers’ rights. They just don’t.”
Adult workers face an environment in which they are often too scared to
exercise their right to organize for better working conditions. Only
approximately 1 percent of banana workers are affiliated with workers’
organizations—a rate far lower than any Central American
banana-exporting country.
Ecuadorian law fails to protect effectively the right to freedom of
association, and employers take advantage of the weak law and even
weaker enforcement to impede worker organizing.
Workers illegally fired for union activity have no right to
reinstatement. Instead, in the unlikely event that the offending
employers are found responsible, they must pay only a negligible
fine—often less than $400. And employers circumvent labor laws by
relying on subcontractors to provide workers and by hiring “permanent
temporary” workers with even fewer rights than permanent workers. The
heavy use of subcontracted “perma-temps” has created a workforce with no
right to bargain with employers who control working conditions. Instead,
subcontracted “perma-temps” only enjoy the relatively useless right to
organize and bargain with their virtually powerless subcontractors.
“Most workers on these plantations can’t organize to protest their
working conditions,” Vivanco said. “Either they suffer in silence, or
they risk being fired.”
Human Rights Watch urged banana-exporting corporations to demand that
labor rights be respected on their supplier plantations and to monitor
compliance with this requirement.
Human Rights Watch also called on Ecuador to enforce its labor laws. The
organization also urged Ecuador to guarantee children’s right to
education by ensuring, as required by the country’s own law, that all
children under fifteen have access to free schooling. In addition,
Human Rights Watch called for the amendment of labor legislation to
guarantee workers’ right to freedom of association by banning anti-union
discrimination in hiring, requiring reinstatement of workers fired for
union activity, strengthening laws governing the use of temporary
workers, and adopting meaningful sanctions for anti-union conduct.
Vivanco said the report’s findings highlight the need for effective
labor rights protections in any future trade agreement with Ecuador,
including the Free Trade Area of the Americas.
The report is available at
http://www.hrw.org/embargo/ecuador/
To find out what you can do to improve conditions on Ecuadoran banana
plantations, go to http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/ecuador/
To see testimonies from the report, go to
http://www.hrw.org/press/2002/04/ecuador0425.htm#testimonies
-- Evan Weinberger Communications Associate Human Rights Watch 350 Fifth Ave., 34th Floor New York, N.Y. 10118-3299 ph: (212) 216-1832 fax: (212) 736-1300------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Buy Stock for $4 and no minimums. FREE Money 2002. http://us.click.yahoo.com/k6cvND/n97DAA/ySSFAA/BGfwlB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~->
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