July 2003

Chiquita reached an agreement in April with its union SITRACHILCO to sell one of Chiquita's two operations in Panama, PAFCO, to a cooperative. PAFCO currently employs over 3,000 workers. Details of the agreement are still being negotiated but in essence it divests Chiquita of a money-losing operation and puts the future of the workforce in the hands of a worker cooperative which will sell its product to Chiquita. The general secretary of the union is also president of the cooperative. Chiquita had said that the only other option was to shut down the plantations completely.

As expected, U.S. negotiators for the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) have proposed weak worker rights provisions based on those contained in the recently-negotiated trade agreements with Chile and Singapore. At a negotiating session in mid-May in Guatemala, Bush Administration negotiators proposed to their Central American counterparts that CAFTA signatories be required to do no more than enforce their own labor laws, whether or not their labor laws fall short of international standards.

BJ&B produces caps for Reebok, universities, and others, and is owned by one of the biggest cap producing companies in the world, Korea-based Yupoong. The contract provides for a 10% wage increase and other benefits.

Two of the world's largest coffee trading companies announced in May that they had entered into agreements with Rainforest Alliance to increase production of "sustainable coffee," described as coffee production that meets both environmental and social criteria. The two companies, Neumann and Volcafe, reportedly trade about 25% of the world's coffee. The companies move comes in response to the continuing coffee crisis, which has driven world coffee prices, and quality, down.

The Comité Fronterizo de Obrer (CFO), a Mexican-based organization that supports organizing in the country's maquiladora sector, issued a report at the end of May, 2003 on the efforts by workers at Alcoa's twin factories in Piedra Niegras to organize a democratic trade union and improve working conditions. As previously reported, democratic union supporters were beaten in February 2002 by company-supported union supporters shortly after their effort went public. Local Mexican government authorities also intervened against the independent union. USLEAP responded along with others to the call for international support.