Global Labor Strategies

Is Another World Possible?

[This article originally appeared in The Nation, available here.]

The recently concluded World Social Forum is a good gauge for assessing the state of the world's alternative social, economic and political movements. Organized in 2001 as a counterpoint to the World Economic Forum, the annual meeting of global and corporate elites held in Davos, Switzerland, the WSF brings social movement organizations and activists from around the world together around the idea that "another world is possible." If Davos represents a failed globalization from above, the WSF represents an emerging globalization from below. It's a massive affair--this year more than 100,000 people gathered here for the five-day event. Part political convention, part carnival, part countercultural happening, the WSF serves as the center of gravity for the global justice movement that emerged in the late 1990s to contest corporate globalization.

The question on the minds of many was how to respond to what some call the "crisis of crises"--the economic, climate, political and cultural catastrophes that have engulfed the planet--and whether social movements can provide a unifying alternative vision for a better world. Economist Walden Bello of Focus on the Global South summed it up: "There is a sense of urgency and seriousness combining both pragmatism and principle. There is much less rhetoric. Things are taking place very fast outstripping what many predicted. There is a clear collapse of neo-liberalism. We have been triumphant over Davos.... Now we need alternatives and must get down to the hard work of creating them."

What’s It Got to do with the Price of Tortillas in Mexico?

Hundreds of thousands of people marched through downtown Mexico City the last day of January protesting the rise in the price of tortillas and other staple foods.   The march was filled with housewives beating pots and pans in the kind of “casarolazo” made famous by the resistance movements of Argentina.  Supported by unions, farmers, and leftist groups, the march was initiated by the National Union of Workers (UNT), a federation of labor organizations independent of Mexico’s political parties, according to an article by John Ross in UE's invaluable web publication Mexican Labor News and Analysis.   

Mexico’s “tortilla crisis” provides an all-too-vivid illustration of the way globalization, neoliberalism, and trade agreements like NAFTA actually affect the lives or ordinary people around the globe.

How Workers Run Argentina's “Recuperated Workplaces”

In a previous post, we described the process by which workers in 200 workplaces in Argentina occupied their workplaces and began running them themselves.  In this post we will examine how the workplaces are actually run and how their workers are dealing with the managerial, economic, legal, and political questions that arise when workers try to run their own workplaces.  Much of our information comes from a new book edited by Marina Sitrin called “Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina” (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2006).

After workers had occupied their workplaces and, if necessary, warded off the efforts of former bosses and police to take them back, what happened next?

Argentina's “Recuperated Workplaces”

What happens when a group of workers take over their workplace and try to run it without private owners, professional managers, or the government?  10,000 workers in 200 workplaces in Argentina are trying to find out.

Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein’s movie “The Take” provided many non-Argentineans an introduction to Argentina’s movement of “recuperated factories.”  But beyond that information has been difficult to get.  Now a new book edited by Marina Sitrin called “Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina” (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2006) provides a revealing portrait of the movement.

Raids, Reforms, and the Labor Movement

The December immigration raids at Swift & Co, and increased enforcement activity elsewhere, are a body blow against labor’s attempt to organize low wage workers.

Undocumented workers comprise a significant percentage of the workforce in many of the industries targeted for organizing by unions including cleaning contractors, hotels, meatpacking, food processing, light industry, and commercial laundries. The raids will make workers feel more insecure and may make them less willing to take the chances required to organize. The raids may also make employers more willing to use immigration status as a club to thwart organizing and more willing to cooperate with immigration authorities to protect themselves from prosecution or lawsuits. If a significant percentage of the workforce feels vulnerable, all workers will be hurt since chances of successful organizing campaigns will be greatly reduced.

With so much at stake the response by unions has been remarkably timid. Those unions that have spoken out have mainly issued press releases to condemn the raids and to call for Congressional action on immigration reform. That is simply not enough.

In fact, the raids also provide a good opportunity for labor to reframe the immigration debate with fresh ideas and new action. The raids were an affront to common decency. They were an assault on human rights, on labor rights, and on the notion of proportionality in the conduct of law enforcement. The raids were conducted under false pretenses —only a handful of those caught in the raids were charged with “identity theft”—the ostensible reason for the raids; and they were discriminatory—company officials who knowingly built an entire staffing system in the meatpacking industry based on undocumented workers walked away free.

As part of reframing the immigration issue, labor leaders need to stand shoulder to shoulder with workers from the affected communities, in the affected communities. They need to make a public display of supporting those swept up in the raids, many of whom are now unemployed and facing deportation.  And—very importantly—they need to stress that the raids undermine working conditions for all workers—not just undocumented immigrants.  One way to do this would be to hold public hearings in which workers in the industry—immigrant and non-immigrants—tell their stories. Properly done, reframing the immigration issue can both help build alliances between immigrant and non-immigrant workers for real immigration reform and cement the relationship of labor with immigrant communities in the upcoming policy debates and the 2008 elections.

Mexican Workers Fight Back

On July 17th, Grupo Mexico, one of the world's largest copper mines, fired their entire La Caridad workforce to break a five month strike. According the Reuters roughly 2000 workers' contracts were canceled with prior approval from the Fox government (the Reuters article can be found here). Simultaneously, in response to workers' attempts to take over the huge Sicartsa steel plant in the state of Michoacán, several workers have just been killed, some forty more have been injured, and parts of the plant have been taken over by the Mexican Army and Navy. (Both of these companies are owned by major financial backers of Mexican President Fox.)

According to a recent article by David Bacon in The Nation Magazine entitled "Mexico's Labor Rebels," these strikes and others sweeping through the Mexican border region offer one key to unlock the mysteries of the on-going Mexican election debacle. 

In the lead-up to the election, as Mexican President Fox -- who is a member of the same party as conservative presidential candidate Felipe Calderón -- was trying break the miner's legal strike, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, candidate of the left-leaning PRD party, outlined his labor policy on a campaign swing through Sonora, the state where the La Caridad miners were on strike. "We will promote respect for union democracy," he told reporters. "And there will be no intervention in the life of the unions. Workers can freely elect their own leaders." According to Bacon, "if it's up to the unions in Mexican mines and mills, the conservative wave of the past decade will soon be history."  More than four million Mexican workers protested in support of the miners during the lead-up to the election. (Read more here)

At the same time, the Mexican unions haven't put all their eggs in the electoral basket.  Building on previous solidarity actions with U.S. steel and mine workers, the campaign has reached across the border.  The US Steelworkers and the National Union of Mine, Metalurgical and Allied Workers of Mexico "formed a strategic alliance last year, but their ties go back much further. Copper miners on both sides of the border come from the same families. In the cold war era, the left-wing Mine Mill union, now part of USW, supported Mexican copper strikes. That tradition was renewed in 1998, when union caravans from Arizona brought food and help to Cananea, where workers were striking against the Larreas over workforce cuts. "Grupo Mexico now owns mines on the US side, so we're facing the same employers," explains Gerry Fernandez, USW international director. "We're directly affected by the Mexican government's attack on the mineros, and we're going to defend them."  Most recently the US Steelworkers helped Gómez Urrutia, General Secretary of the Mexican mine workers union, to escape to a secret location in Canada to avoid continual death threats. Unions around the world are also calling for Urrutia's reinstatement after being refused his elected position by Mexico's secretary of labor.

The outcome of the presidential election is still unclear.  According to Bacon,"Mexico has traveled so far down the road of neoliberal transformation that union democracy alone cannot reverse its course. But the ability of workers to control their unions is the key to electing leaders willing to challenge corporations and the government policies protecting them. Despite their weakened state, unions are still a powerful force. And rank-and-file miners and teachers have been willing to face repression and violence to defend their leaders who demand a change in direction."

The fate of the striking workers is also unclear.  Mexican unions are calling for solidarity and support. More information can be found here.  And to read more on the USW's solidarity actions in support of Mexican miners follow this link.  We will try to keep you posted.

N.H.

Tribunals and International Law from Below

The Vienna Tribunal on Neo-Liberal Policies and European Transnational Corporations in Latin America and the Caribbean held in May was a small but important step in a long process of reining in the tremendous—and largely unregulated—power of transnational corporations.

The Tribunal’s focus on the activity of EU based global corporations highlighted the increasing role that EU companies play in Latin America. The EU is now the biggest source of foreign investment in the region and the biggest trading partner of the countries of the Southern Cone. Many EU-based global corporations were instrumental in promoting the destructive privatization efforts of the 1990s and early 2000’s.

The Tribunal jury—comprised of eminent politicians, activists, and intellectuals—heard evidence on some 3 dozen European based global corporations doing business in Latin America and the Caribbean presented by representatives of about 50 labor and civil society organization from Europe and Latin America.

The cases were clustered in by sector—such as finance, energy, agriculture--and often involved the same companies doing business in several Latin American countries. This clustering of cases allowed for the emergence of a bottom-up critique of the full impact of global corporations on the economies, politics, and environment of Latin America. It became clear that critical issues facing Latin America—access to clean water, the privatization of resources, changes in the banking system, socially and environmentally destructive agribusinesses—were a result of global corporate agendas and not the consequences of “free market” forces.               

The testimony of experts, activists, and ordinary people was often poignant and eloquent. The cases and witnesses heard over two long days may only have scratched the surface of exposing the power global corporations wield but they underlined the need for people-friendly global regulations in the global economy.

Activists are now engaged in follow-up activities: organizing the case materials presented at the Tribunal; solidifying the links between organizations and movements for future cooperation; and making plans for future actions. In the coming weeks and months much of the information presented at the Tribunal will become available on-line. We’ll let you know when it does.

But the Tribunal raises another important question: what use are events like Tribunals? What effect can a body with no legal standing and no power to hold anyone accountable possibly have? Are tribunals just good political theater or can they actually have a real impact? We think they can and here’s why.

Events like the Vienna Tribunal are part of a continuum that leads to international law and rule making. Historically—from the anti-slavery movements of the 19th century to the anti-Apartheid movements of the 20th century—public non-governmental commissions and tribunals have played an important role in shaping discourse and as a result in changing behavior and creating hard law.

“Soft” processes like tribunals and “hard” processes like international laws, rules, and standards are much more related than most people think. In fact, almost all international laws and standards—from the ILO to environmental treaties—are “soft”, since there is no real investigatory or enforcement mechanism except for the power to publicly shame offenders. And the reality is that countries regularly try to ignore international laws and standards when it suits them. But, even so, these laws and standards do have an impact. They define the limits of acceptable behavior and in doing so, hold violators up to international shame in ways that can affect their standing in the world.

Sometimes—as in the recent US Supreme Court decision requiring the Bush administration to adhere to the rules of the Geneva Convention when holding prisoners—international law directly impacts national law. 

Tribunals can play an essential role in interpreting, applying, and broadening the scope of international law and the creating the mechanisms to enforce it. Tribunals can shape public discourse, expose egregious exploitation, and raise issues and gather information for further international law. In fact, the process of creating new International law and regulations always begins in this way.

Unfortunately, as we noted above, the problem with international law is in many ways the same as the problem of Tribunals: most international law lacks any effective investigatory or enforcement power. The ILO, for instance, has been passing rules about labor rights and standards since 1919. But the ILO has no ability to enforce compliance with its conventions. In fact, almost any international treaty and you will find signatories that are in regular violation and few global venues to hold violators accountable. They all depend in large measure on their ability to shame and shun violators.

Even so, the basic labor rights out-lined by the ILO, for instance, have become recognized standards in most countries and the basis of a great deal of enforceable national labor law.

Law and standards serve a second function. People organize their struggles around the fight for “rights” for “fairness” for “justice” and for the rule of law. Those that traveled to Vienna to present their cases did so because they wanted a venue to show the justice of their cause and to issue a denuncia against those that would do them harm. The Tribunal process helped them to develop a narrative of their case that can contribute to their own struggles back home, recruit new allies and to the broader global fight for justice.

Law is meaningless without social movements to enforce it. Tribunals are part of building a social movement and framing a discourse to set regulations in the global economy that are in the people’s interest.

It will take action by labor, civil society organizations, and a mobilized global citizenry to give global public opinion of the kind fomented by the Vienna Tribunal—and international law generally—the clout needed to regulate the behavior of global corporations. Such activity is already reflected in the growing number of global corporate campaigns; the negotiation of framework labor agreements; in global public policy fights like the struggle against the big pharmaceutical companies for AIDS drugs for all; in the fights of countries to maintain control their own natural resources against pressures to privatize; in boycotts and actions against the IMF, the World Bank, and other agencies of international capital; in the increasing demands for action on global warming. Such global action needs to be pursued in both the North and the South. The Vienna Tribunal was itself a good example of North-South cooperation—it provided important information and built transnational linkages needed to construct a new legal and regulatory framework for the global economy.

In the future, there will be a new global legal framework. We can already see it emerging in the International Criminal Court, in the EU, and in various national laws such as those against war crimes in countries like Germany that claim “universal jurisdiction”. As globalization proceeds and as global civil society develops and the environmental, political, military, and economic sources of social power become more entwined globally, new laws will be needed and they will be created. We have a choice: we can leave the development of those laws to decision makers aligned with global elites, or we can use processes like the Vienna Tribunal to create a people’s legal and regulatory agenda for a new global framework.
M.O.

Build Alliances for Real Immigration Reform

The address by President Bush on May 15 and renewed debate in Congress have kept the issue of immigration reform on the front burner. But the debate is being shaped on the one hand by employers and on the other by right-wing ideologues who claim—falsely—to speak for established US workers. As a result, the debate is full of myths and misconceptions. We offer the following points as themes around which the common interests of immigrants and established workers can coalesce.

The best outcome of the present immigration debate in Congress is no outcome at all. There is virtually no chance that this Congress and this Administration will produce a worker and immigrant friendly immigration bill. In any event, splits in the Republican Party between nativists hoping to stop all immigration and corporate interests seeking greater access to low wage labor make chances of passing anything unlikely. Immigrant advocates should be building momentum for action in the next Congress and beyond. The emphasis on voter registration and getting out the pro-immigrant vote that emerged from the massive immigrant demonstrations could play a decisive role in shaping immigration legislation.

There is no immediate immigration crisis—only a crisis in the election prospects of the Republican Party. Current immigration policies function badly as they have for years. Reform is needed, but the immigration “crisis” is a product of a the Republican right’s attempts to fan the flames of a growing, but still contained, backlash against undocumented immigrants as part of its election year strategy. They may have miscalculated. The real backlash may be among the millions of Hispanic voters, many of whom have voted Republican in past elections.

Increased border security fails to keep undocumented immigrants out, but it does keep them in. The number of border patrol agents increased from around 2,500 in the 1980s to 12,000 today. Over-all spending on border security since the late 1980s has increased 500%. One result is that the cost of making a crossing for an undocumented immigrant today is about  $2,500.  According to Princeton sociologist Douglas Massey in the 1980s about half of all undocumented Mexicans returned home within 12 months, but by 2000 the return rate was only 25%. Thus the net result of increased border security is to actually increase the number of undocumented workers in the US. Immigrant advocates should stop pandering to uninformed or xenophobic voices demanding “border security”.  Effectively sealing the border would require a massive attack on civil liberties and unacceptable economic and political costs in the US and abroad—and its primary effect would be to keep undocumented immigrants from returning home.

Abruptly halting undocumented immigration would have a chaotic effect on the economies of Mexico and Central America.   Remittances from the US account for second largest sources of foreign capital in Mexico after oil. About 18% of Mexican adults—and 29% of Salvadoran adults—receives remittances from someone in the US. Those remittances are essential to support families and build communities. Shutting off the flow would create hardship and instability in Mexico and Central America. Instead ways need to be found to smooth the flow of remittances and make them part of a new economic development strategy that utilizes them to provide socially constructive forms of credit.

Policies supported by the US and institutionalized in treaties like NAFTA are a key factor pushing migrants north. NAFTA helped push around two million peasants off the land in Mexico and forced many Mexican companies out of business because they were unable to compete with cheaper imports. While NAFTA was touted as a way to slow northward migration, it has done the opposite. The giant sucking sound that many thought NAFTA would produce turned out to be less from jobs going south than from workers heading north. In 1995 there were 2.5 million undocumented Mexican workers in the US, ten years later there were more than 10.5 million.  Any solution to the immigration problem must begin with rewriting NAFTA. With massive political change going on in Latin America, it’s time to take a fresh look at ways new hemispheric economic policies can make it possible for people to live decently at home without being dependent on migration or remittances from the US or elsewhere.

In some industries and some localities there is already a hemispheric labor market. In some occupations undocumented immigrants make up a substantial percentage of the workforce. About 24% of all farm workers are undocumented immigrants; 17% of all cleaners; 14% of all construction workers; and 12% of all food preparation workers. Taking a closer look at jobs within these categories 36% of all insulation workers; 29% of all roofers and drywall workers; and 27% of all butchers and food processors are undocumented. It is interesting to note that many of these occupations have had a large immigrant component throughout the 20th century. National laws have not kept pace with the reality of transnational labor markets. What’s needed now are laws and regulations that guarantee immigrant workers the basic human and labor rights needed to let them work and live in dignity.

Any comprehensive immigration program will be the result of a compromise among workers—both immigrant and established—employers, and politicians. The result will not be perfect, but it can be satisfactory. Employers need immigrant workers; workers need jobs. The interests of both are opposed to the right-wing anti-immigrant ideologues.

There is the basis for an alliance between immigrant and established workers. Immigrant rights advocates and progressives should not cede the established working class to the right-wing nativists. US workers—partly because many have immigrant roots—can be an ally in the fight for just reforms as the progressive role of US unions in the current debate shows. But fears that immigrants take jobs and decrease wages need to be taken seriously. Immigration legislation should emphasize the labor rights of immigrant workers both to protect their human dignity and to protect the wages and working conditions of established workers.

Immigration reform must be hemispheric in scope. A step in the direction of recognizing the hemispheric and global nature of the immigration issue has already been taken. The governments of the nations of Latin America that send migrants to the US have banded together to lobby against the most draconian immigration reform bills currently before Congress. This recognition that immigration is no longer a strictly national issue should prompt the labor and social movements in Latin America and the US to convene a hemispheric meeting of unions and social movements to help draft a worker and immigrant friendly immigration program.  Unions and social movements should not leave immigration reform to elite decision makers whether in the US or in the hemisphere.

A program can be developed that represents the interests of established US workers, undocumented immigrants, and Latin Americans. Their interests can be meshed with those of the US employers on this issue. The claims of nativist ideologues to speak for American workers can be discredited. If the groundwork for such a program is laid now, the alliance of immigrant and established workers can seize the initiative in shaping immigration legislation after the 2006 election.

M.O.

Sao Paulo Declaration

Protecting the environment is a fundamental need of working people; after all, workers must breathe the air, drink the water, depend on energy and other resources, and face the hurricanes, floods, and ecological destruction that result from global warming.  But the specific policy objectives of labor movements struggling for jobs and organizational position have often come into conflict with environmental movements an policies.  Now the changing political, economic, and social situation in Latin America and the Caribbean is creating an opening for a new synthesis of labor and environmental concerns.

This April, 60 unionists from 13 countries met in Sao Paulo for the first Union Conference on Labor and Environment in Latin America and the Caribbean.  Brought together by the new International Labour Foundation for Sustainable Development (Sustainlabour) and ICFTU’s Regional Inter-American Organization of Workers (CIOSL-ORIT), they drew up the “Sao Paulo Declaration” designed to express the labor movement’s concern for environmental issues.  As the Declaration states: 

“Decent work is essential for people to enjoy a sustainable livelihood.  However, it is only possible to create decent and secure jobs if environmental sustainability is attained.”

The Conference represents the intersection of two conflicting forces.  On the one hand, since the 1980s and 1990s, “the region has been a privileged testing ground for neoliberal policies that promoted privatization and denationalization of companies, neoliberal restructuring of production, mass unemployment and precarious work situations.”  These policies have followed the “paradigm of structural adjustment favored” by “large transnational corporations.”  Current trade negotiations will have “direct consequences for water, public services, education, health, communications and other sectors.”

But in spite of this, “in recent years, large-scale struggles and social movements have been able to challenge neoliberal policies, transforming Latin America and the Caribbean into a point of reference for resistance to neoliberalism with the participation of unions, the peasand and indigenous movements.” 

The declaration ties these movements directly to environmental issues.  “Not by chance, some of these large struggles have developed around protecting natural resources, against water privatization, and protecting natural gas and other public goods in different countries in the region.” 

Such movements have created the context in which “various governments, committed to popular struggles and social movements, have been elected and are now constructing a new socio-political milieu in the region.”  These include “Alternativa Bolivariana par alas Americas – ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America and the Caribean), the Comunidad Suramericana de Naciones – CSN (South American Community of Nations), and the Tratados de Comercio con los Pueblos – TCP (Trade Agreements with the Peoples).”   

In this context, the Sao Paulo statement brings together a number of proposals to “strengthen the links between the environment, work, and poverty.”  For example:

-- “Mainstreaming and systematically addressing public policies that guarantee access to goods and services, sanitation, health, energy, housing, education, public transportation, social security as an indispensable element in overcoming poverty and protecting access to water as a human right.

-- “To protect the fundamental rights of workers and their unions, such as the right to free association and collective negotiation so that they can participate in strategies in favor of sustainable development, which is understood as development that ensures decent work with clean technology and productive processes that do not harm the environment, workers, their families or society in general.”

-- “To protect gender equity and the inclusion of women workers as a fundamental condition for advancing the realization of an environmentally and socially sustainable region.”

-- “Just transitions” toward sustainable production and consumption, with policies that ensure that “workers who are negatively affected during restructuring processes have decent work alternatives.”

“To reject ‘double standard’ policies used by some multinational companies that ‘export’ to Latin America and the Caribbean production methods that negatively impact the environment and that are not legally or socially acceptable in their countries of origin.”

The Declaration calls for a specific set of convergences and alliances.  For example, labor should “strengthen strategic relationships with other social movements and socio-environmental organizations and networks, particularly with the Alianza Social Continental” – known in the US as the Hemispheric Social Alliance (HSA) – “and its development of ‘Alternatives for the Americas,’ which includes an important section on the environment.”  It should “establish water as a key issue for union work in the region, supporting the position of ISP and other social organizations in the Joint Declarations of Social Movements and Organizations on Water at the Social Forum of the Americas (Caracas, January 2006) and during the round of meetings on cities during the IV World Forum on Water (Mexico, March 2006).”  And labor should “support actions undertaken by REL-UITA, COPROFAM and other organizations” to “combat the expansion of agrotoxins, transgenics and production models of intensive agriculture based on unsustainable production techniques.”

The Declaration also begins to sketch what labor-friendly sustainable development might entail.  It proposes, for example, to “promote an agricultural production model based on principles of agroecology and family agriculture.”  It sees this as “directly linked to the movement for agrarian reform and to demands for food security and sovereignty and justice in agriculture.”

Declarations can be nothing more than just that.  But in this case, the participants in the Sao Paulo conference will return home to a context of broad social ferment, in which the possibilities for “another world” appear as more than a distant dream.  The water, energy, and other struggles in the region have already begun to draw together environmental and social concerns.  As they experiment with new ways to integrate environmental issues with more traditional labor social, those of us in the rest of the world should be watching closely to see what we can learn. 

[Documents from the Conference are available at:  http://www.sustainlabour.org/documents.php]

y.r.

Banana Unionism Goes Transnational

The “race to the bottom” is often thought of in terms of cheaper labor attracting jobs from the first world to the third world.  But in today’s globalized economy the race to the bottom among third world countries is at least as destructive.  A recent book by U.S. labor and women’s historian Dana Frank called Bananeras: Women Transforming the Banana Unions of Latin America (Cambridge: South End Press, 2005) describes a powerful example: the Latin American banana industry.  (For the book’s discussion of women banana workers’ unionism, see the previous blog.)

Four hundred thousand men and women work on the export-sector banana plantations of Latin America.  Three transnational corporations – Chiquita, Dole, and Del Monte – control two-thirds of the sales of Latin American bananas.  The plantations are scattered around Honduras, Guatamala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama Columbia, and Ecuador.  37,000 Latin American banana workers are represented by unions – a union density approaching that of the U.S. private sector.

In the 1970s, the Ecuadorian banana unions were destroyed.  Since then, Ecuador has led the race to the bottom.  It now employs over 250,000 of the region’s 400,000 banana workers – all nonunion.  Workers who try to organize are fired, blacklisted, and threatened with assassination.  Its banana workers make as little as one-fifth the wages and benefits of other Latin American banana workers.  Their work is highly casualized without job security or benefits.  That’s why, according to Dana Frank, “the banana transnationals are gradually pulling out of other parts of Latin America and sourcing from Ecuador, or using Ecuador as a pretext to lower standards elsewhere.” 

Big Banana has used other techniques to weaken labor.  Since the 1950s they have increasingly sold their plantations and bought bananas from subcontractors; Chiquita, for example, sold off its entire operation in Columbia in 2004.  Since the late 1990s, the employers have moved from regular jobs to “flexible” work arrangements that provide no job security or standard working hours.  And of course, they have used political repression and outright violence against workers throughout their history.  (Many will remember the concealed massacre of striking banana workers in Macondo described in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ famous novel One Hundred Years of Solitude; his recent autobiography Living to Tell the Tale reveals that this was based on a real massacre of banana workers that took place in the town where he spent his early childhood and which served as the model for Macondo.)

At the end of the cold war, banana companies bet on a huge expansion of sales in Russia and Eastern Europe – and lost.  Faced with overproduction and plummeting prices, they began squeezing workers and threatening to move to Ecuador.

Any group of workers who threatened to resist were likely to find their employer simply pulling up stakes and moving somewhere with a better “labor climate” – just as the fictional banana company abandoned Macondo after the strike in One Hundred Years of Solitude.  Banana union leader German Zepeda noted,

“Logically, there was a big problem with the banana labor movement in Latin America.  We’d never met.  Even at the level of individual countries, we had so many unions and didn’t even know each other.”

Faced with a regional crisis, leaders from banana unions in Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, and Costa Rica met informally in 1993 to organize support for Costa Rican banana workers’ resistance to intense union busting.  They created a new organization called the Coalition of Latin American Banana Unions (COLSIBA).  According to Dana Frank, “In all of Latin America, COLSIBA is the only organization that joins unions in the same sector across national lines in an autonomous regional coalition.” 

COLSIBA delegates meet several times a year to analyze developments in the global banana industry and organize common responses.  “When crises emerge in a given country – a strike, for example, or the Del Monte kidnappings in Guatemala – COLSIBA leaders are quick to travel to the region, launch international press campaigns, and link up with allies.”

In 2001, COLSIBA coordinated an agreement with Chiquita.  Half of Chiquita’s workers are unionized, and they make up 90 percent of the unionized banana workers in Latin America.  For whatever reasons, since the late ‘90s Chiquita had been positioning itself as the “socially responsible” banana corporation.  Through the good offices of the International Union of Food Workers, the global union federation for the food industry, an agreement was negotiated in which Chiquita pledged to respect worker rights.  The agreement established COLSIBA as the representative of banana workers throughout much of the region.  The agreement applies to anti-union activity by the company at its unionized plantations and protects the right of workers to organize at plantations that Chiquita owns or subcontracts with. 

How much protection the agreement will provide in practice is still being tested.  But it has already established two facts.  Even under extremely adverse conditions, people who work in the same industry or company can create links for cooperation and even joint bargaining across national boundaries.  And when they do so, they are likely to be a lot stronger than if they try to take on powerful global corporations one union or even one country at a time.

y.r.