Jeg spiste en banan til frokosten i dag. Hm.
Trond Andresen
*****************
Workers Pay Brutal Price for Cheap Fruit
http://commondreams.org/headlines02/0616-04.htm
Published on Sunday, June 16, 2002 in the Sunday Herald (Scotland)
by Elizabeth Mistry
When Alvaro Noboa, Ecuador's richest man, sent an army of hired
muscle to break up a strike at his plantation, it wasn't entirely
unexpected because violence is a common response by the banana
barons who want to hang on to control of the multi-million pound
business. But Noboa, who promotes himself as a man of the people,
could be Ecuador's next president and the incident has spread
ripples of fear among the region's agricultural workers.
It was around two o'clock in the morning when masked men burst
into the makeshift shacks on the Los Alamos plantation, less than
50 miles from the country's second city, Guayaquil. Strikers were
hauled off the wooden banana boxes they use as mattresses and told
they would be shot if they didn't halt the week-long protest.
In Los Alamos, which is a vast complex of banana fields and
packing centers, there are no telephones and no electricity. Nor
is there any medical provision for the 1200 workers who have to
carry drinking water in empty chemical containers, violating the
code of conduct set up by agrochemical manufacturers, such as
Syngenta which produces the banana fungicide Amistar at its plant
in Grangemouth.
It is 11 miles up a dirt track to the first packing plant where
the fruit is wrapped in polythene and prepared for shipping to the
US and Europe where it is sold under the Bonita brand. Banana
exports, a mainstay of the Ecuadorian economy, are worth about
$900 million each year. The country produces more than a quarter
of the world's crop but wages are low. Workers at Los Alamos are
paid between $25 and $30 for an 84-hour week.
When union co-ordinator Guillermo Touma, a former teenage banana
worker, arrived at the plantation, he found 33-year-old Mauro
Romero lying in a pool of blood with a bullet in his leg. For
Touma, the scenario was hardly a novelty but on that day he was
accompanied by Jan Nimmo, a Glaswegian artist who is also the
Scottish coordinator of BananaLink, a British NGO.
Nimmo, who returned to Scotland this week, was shocked by what she
found. 'When we arrived the place was in chaos. The guards had
beaten people up, thrown some of them into one of the banana
transporters and tried to shut them in,' she said. Luckily they
didn't succeed because they would have died in there.
'I had to dive under the truck and could feel the bullets pinging
off the side of the vehicle. No police came until later and it was
clear they were not going to intervene.'
In the report Tainted Harvest, which was issued last month, Human
Rights Watch slammed the Ecuadorian industry for malpractice,
including child labor. Ian King, senior organizer for the GMB
union in Scotland, said: ' Conditions won't improve if people stop
buying Ecuadorian bananas but it would help if people tell stores
they want fruit that has been produced in accordance with fair
practice.
'Retailers are demanding cheap prices from producers but they
don't realize the implications for workers and families. Standards
in Ecuador would appall any civil society.'
Noboa has yet to officially declare himself a candidate. He was
runner up in 1998, and is believed to be waiting until after the
World Cup to announce plans for his new political party -- the
Independent Renewal Party of Alvaro Noboa. He insists the protest
is over, but Touma says it continues with the displaced workers
camped outside the gates of Los Alamos because their homes were
flattened and belongings and money stolen in the raid.
Fenacle, the union federation where Touma works, is looking after
Romero whose leg was later amputated. The hospital initially
refused to treat him because his employer, a shell company owned
by Noboa, hadn't paid his social security stamp. He now has little
hope of providing for his wife and daughter.
'Our bananas are bonita -- beautiful,' says Touma. 'But they are
produced with our blood. We are paying too high a price so you can
have cheap fruit.'
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : 11-07-02 MET DST