Banana Worker Justice Project

This project supports the basic rights of and economic justice for banana workers in Central America, Colombia and Ecuador.  

The banana sector is the most heavily unionized private sector in Latin America.  Most unionized banana workers earn significantly greater wages and receive good benefits compared to non-union banana workers.  But increased competition in the banana industry has spurred a “race to the bottom,” leading to the loss of thousands of unionized jobs, violent responses to union organizing, and lowering of benefit and wage standards as production shifts to non-union, low-wage areas, especially in Ecuador and the south coast of Guatemala.

As part of this project, begun in 1998, USLEAP has undertaken a strategic analysis of the banana industry, initiated strategic planning meetings with the banana worker unions, campaigned against Chiquita (1998), Del Monte (1991-2001), Noboa (2002 and on-going) and Dole (on-going), and supported organizing initiatives in the region, especially in Ecuador, the largest exporter of bananas in the world.  Ecuador, along with the Pacific coast of Guatemala, is leading the "race to the bottom" in the banana industry with  some of the worst standards in the region in terms of wages, conditions, and respect for basic worker rights.

For this project, USLEAP workers closely with the Coordination of Latin American Banana Worker Unions (COLSIBA), which represents over 20,000 organized banana workers in the region, the International Union of Foodworkers (IUF), a Geneva-based global union federation, and the European Banana Action Network (EUROBAN), a coalition of 40 European non-governmental organizations, unions and others.