Chiquita is one of the largest banana transnational corporations in the world. Workers of its Costa Rica plantations, organized in the Union of Agriculture, Livestock and Related Industry Workers of Heredia (SITAGAH), denounce that they are fumigated with agrotoxic chemicals while working, and are fired on the grounds of serious misconduct if they complain. To make matters worse, workers alert to the existence of union persecution and the substitution of Police, and even the Justice system itself, by private guards

Day was barely dawning, last March 16, when Miguel Sánchez and a fellow supervisor -known by workers as “Emilio”- from the Coyol estate, owned by the corporation Compañía Bananera Atlántica Limitada (COBAL-CHIQUITA), located in the region of Sarapaquí, Costa Rica, ordered a crew to go into a plantation area and spray it with the nematicide Furadan. The area was filled with several workers and sharecroppers carrying out various tasks, but their presence did not prevent the potent agrotoxic chemical from being sprayed.

The crew that was applying the nematicide invaded the crop area due to the negligence of Sánchez and “Emilio,” as a representative of management acknowledged at the conciliation hearing held on May 3 at the Ministry of Labor. During that meeting, the company representative admitted that there had been a lack of coordination, which resulted in workers being exposed to the nematicide.

What is Furadan

Also known as Carbofuran (N-Methyl Carbamate) and other commercial names, it is a product classified as “highly toxic,” and all the international toxicology literature available recommends that in the event of acute exposure a doctor be consulted immediately. The main symptoms of Furadan poisoning are malaise, muscle weakness, dizziness and sweating, headache, salivation, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, blurred vision, incoordination, muscle twitching, and slurred speech. In severe cases, it causes depression of the central nervous system, as manifested by coma, hypotonicity, hypertension and cardiorespiratory depression, Other acute symptoms are dyspnea, bronchospasm, bronchitis and eventual pulmonary edema.*

In addition, it is emphatically cautioned that contaminated persons are not to return to their homes in their work gear, to prevent their families from being intoxicated, and it is recommended that the persons affected be monitored by a doctor for several weeks after poisoning.

COBAL-CHIQUITA not only exposed the workers to this dangerous agrotoxic chemical, it also replaced all its duties with a milk carton, and sent their personnel home in their contaminated clothes.

Consequences

All the workers that were in the area where Furadan was sprayed felt the effects of the nematicide. Alexander Reyes Zúñiga and Jaime Blanco Juárez suffered severe dizziness, vomiting and fatigue. Blanco Juárez was taken to a clinic, while the supervisor gave Reyes Zúñiga sugared water and a carton of milk, and sent him home.

The following day, Reyes showed up for work but told his supervisor that he still felt the same symptoms of intoxication. But as that morning there was more work than hands, Reyes was sent to the plantation to work like any other day.

Complain and be punished

Reyes is a representative of the Union of Agriculture, Livestock and Related Industry Workers of Heredia (SITAGAH) in the area, and the union is an affiliate of the Coordinating Body of the Costa Rica Banana Unions (COSIBACR). Together with Marco Gonzáles Borges, another of the affected workers, Reyes decided to make a complaint with the company and report the supervisors’ recklessness in ordering the application of Furadan with the laborers still within the spraying area. COBAL-CHIQUITA, however, not only dismissed the complaint and refused to investigate what had happened, it also accused the complaining workers of irresponsibility for working in a restricted area. A month after the incident, the two workers were fired without severance pay.

Background

There’s actually nothing new about this situation, except now the impunity enjoyed by COBAL-CHIQUITA has reached extraordinary heights. Especially if we take into account the numerous complaints that have been filed by SITAGAH and COSIBACR over the past several months, essentially accusing the company of:

Union persecution

Any worker that joins the union is threatened with dismissal, and with having their name and that of their relatives blacklisted; they are discriminated by being given the harshest and worst paid tasks. In this way, unionized workers are permanently subjected to a psychological pressure exerted by so-called “labor specialists,” whose true function in the company is the deployment of an antiunion policy.

Layoffs as punishment

Through the “labor relations specialists,” the company has invented disciplinary procedures, which it refers to as “due process.” The particularity of these procedures is that the company is both judge and jury, as it conducts  “the inquiries” and decides if the worker is laid off; and what’s worse: the workers it puts through these falsely-called due processes are refused copy of the documentation that supposedly gave rise to the inquiry, and thus they are denied the right to a defense and a true due process. Obviously, these procedures are not contemplated in Costa Rica’s legislation, and therefore have no legitimate basis whatsoever. Yet, through the application of this sui generis methodology, so far this year COBAL-CHIQUITA has fired more than 30 workers without severance pay for the “crime” of being unionized, and more than 50 others have been fired with severance pay for the same cause.

Labor and wage persecution

Unionized workers are put to harsh tests: they’re redistributed from their usual tasks with the aim of lowering their wages, even though they perform their duties as carefully, or more so, than other workers, more is demanded from them than from anybody else, and their work is inspected very closely; they’re isolated from other workers with the sole aim of making an example out of them and preventing the union from growing.

Private guards

The labor relations that COBAL-CHIQUITA maintains with its workers, especially those in the union, are conducted in a repressive, violent and bullying manner. For example, the company’s private security guards have been involved in the confiscation of documents from immigrant workers, while threatening these workers with deportation. The guards also intimidate union members by raiding their homes, and in at least one occasion, they’ve subjected the children of workers to body searches.

Indifference towards Union complaints

There is a document signed by the Union and the company called the “Conciliation Procedure Rules” under which COBAL-CHIQUITA has the obligation of answering any complaints filed by workers, but the company has been ignoring its obligations, as there are a number of serious complaints that have gone unanswered for as long as a year.

As a result of all this, the workers have filed a complaint with the Inspection Bureau of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security.

In conversation with Sirel, Ramón Barrantes, general coordinator of COSIBACR, said that they are demanding “the immediate opening of negotiations to discuss the conditions of reinstatement of the fired workers, Reyes and Gonzáles, followed by a commitment from the company to conduct its relations with the Union in a serious and responsible manner, towards guaranteeing the observance of the constitutional, human and labor rights of COBAL-CHIQUITA workers.”

Gerardo Iglesias and Carlos Amorín

© Rel-UITA

May 18, 2007

*Source: http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/safety/healthcare/handbook/Chap05.pdf