Project Update: Organising & Training Support for Guatemalan Banana Workers

The TUC Aid / Unite funded programme to provide training for members of Guatemala’s banana unions and to support efforts to organise the lawless south of the country has ended on a positive note.

Guatemala – now considered to be one of the most dangerous countries in which to be a trade unionist – has seen scores of unionists murdered, while their killers operate in a climate of almost total impunity.

Guatemala’s oldest private sector union – SITRABI – organises banana workers in the north of the country, and has been the target of assassination, kidnapping and brutality. Despite this, they are determined to defy some enemies and win over others by developing the effectiveness of the union in the north and slowly building a presence in the dangerous south, where establishing effective collective bargaining could help protect banana wages across the region.

The project

In 2013 TUC Aid, strongly supported by Unite, funded SITRABI to lead a wide reaching project that would:

• Equip union negotiators with new knowledge and skills to maximise potential gains of collective bargaining in currently unionised plantations and to minimise dispute and confrontation
• Help establish Guatemala’s first ever tripartite forum to act as the primary dispute resolution mechanism for workers and employers
• Encourage women members take more leadership positions within the union and
• Establish the basis of organising union activity in the dangerous, non-unionised south

40 union reps and leaders completed the training programme, 10 of them women. A dedicated one-day workshop to promote women’s engagement in the unions recruited 100 participants. New young workers have been trained in tactics and strategies and some are joining the executives of the twelve unions.

Negotiators have begun the job of preparing a new collective bargaining agreement with Del Monte, seeking better social benefits, programmes for women, time off for training, improved health & safety and minimising sub-contracting. However, due to pressure on margins from supermarkets at the top of the supply chain, the unions expect negotiations to be very tough, with big rises in productivity likely to be demanded in return. Organising in the north has brought 150 new members under the auspices of the CBA and the unions negotiating with Chiquita are also bringing 200 new members under their CBA.

Since the training, greater dialogue has been pursued with employers and SITRABI – with their greater experience of mature industrial relations with Del Monte – have continued to support newly trained reps. The Labour Minister has recognised their efforts to reform the relationship between the unions and the producers.

Due to the considerable efforts of SITRABI, the banana unions eventually met with the Ministry of Labour and – crucially – representatives of almost all the northern banana producers in the very first tripartite roundtable in November, and seven times since. The meetings are an historic first, and give the unions a chance to discuss key grievances in the sight of an independent, authoritative, third party. To date there have been no significant breakthroughs, but all parties have recognised the stability that has come from the meetings, with no significant labour disputes or attacks on union members since preparations for the roundtable began last summer.

Although there is a sense that some employers feel that their key concession is to turn up and listen to the unions rather than actually act upon what they hear, the Labour Ministry has announced that it intends to hold a special session of the roundtable to deal with the crucial issue of wage deductions owed to the social security agency and to the unions, which employers have so far been reluctant to act upon.

A delegation from the TUC, the GMB and Unite to inspect the project was also able to gain access to crucial Government ministries to press them on the issue of impunity in anti-trade union crimes.

Organising in the South

Activities continue to promote trade unions in the south, but the risk to SITRABI members remain great. TUC Aid has agreed to fund SITRABI’s organising strategy in the south for a further year, adding to other support from the ITUC, the AFL-CIO and the Italian CGIL, all of whom have been impressed by SITRABI’s work under the auspices of the original project.