Latin American Union to Union Solidarity leaflet

Building Solidarity with
Latin American Partners
Union-Union
Banana Link is a pioneering not‐for‐profit organisation championing fair production and trade in bananas and pineapples. We work towards social, environmental and economic sustainability. Our partners are plantation workers’ unions and small farmer organisations in Latin America, West Africa and the Caribbean. Through our Union‐to‐Union programme we build the capacity of trade unions in producer countries to defend and promote the rights of plantation workers. We build North‐South solidarity links to raise awareness of the daily challenges faced by workers and their communities and encourage long term support from consumer country activists. The majority of plantation workers continue to live in poverty and do not have their most basic rights respected in the workplace. Our sister unions need ongoing solidarity to challenge the repression of the freedom to organise, educate workers about their rights, and empower their union representatives to collectively bargain for living wages and decent work for the men and women that grow the fruit sold on our supermarket shelves. We’d like to share some of our recent activities and achievements with you, as result of this ongoing solidarity and support. Action against violence and impunity in Guatemala
Banana Link has been helping strengthen the capacity of trade unions in the banana plantations in Guatemala (with funding from TUC Aid), through a programme of training and education launched in April 2013. Our work is led by SITRABI, the Izabal Banana Workers’ Union, 12 of whose members have been killed since 2007. Guatemala is now the world’s most dangerous country for trade unionists. 
SITRABI and COLSIBA (the Coordinating Body of Latin American Agro‐industrial Union) have succeeded in persuading the Guatemalan Labour Ministry to set up the first ever banana industry round table 
SITRABI has met with the UN Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) who have agreed a dialogue process starting with 10 of the 68 cases of unionists murdered since 2007 
6,000 emails have been sent following the TUC and Banana Link campaign to ensure the new Guatemalan Attorney General continues the process of investigation into these crimes 
Training workshops have been provided by SITRABI for the executive committee members of six local trade unions and have succeeded in changing some of the confrontational tactics regularly adopted as a response to violations of the signed collective agreements with these companies For more information on our work and achievements with SITRABI in Guatemala, please visit: bananalink.org.uk/sitrabi‐guatemala and watch the Al Jazeera footage on industry conditions on our homepage. bananalink.org.uk ●
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Building solidarity with Latin American partners
More than just bananas in Peru
With funding and support from UNISON and their West Midlands Region, Banana Link has supported Peruvian agricultural workers union, SITAG, to grow to a membership of more than 5000 making it one of the biggest in the country. Agro industry in Peru ‐ which supplies not just bananas, but also mangoes, avocados and blueberries to all of the major UK supermarkets ‐ has grown substantially over the last few years but workers lack the recognition of many of their most basic rights and Peru tops the list of countries with the longest working hours, with 50.9% of the workforce working an average working week of over 48 hours. Banana Link is fundraising to support the organising, education, legal and advocacy work of SITAG to ensure that banana workers receive their basic rights. In partnership with the TUC we are also supporting a project to promote Decent Work for women and men in the non‐traditional agro‐export sector, which includes an Occupational Health & Safety and Workers’ Rights programme, recruitment campaigning and participation in local tripartite social dialogue. Recent achievements include: 
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SITAG presenting a proposal for a sector wide banana agreement between the union and small farmers' associations. Negotiations are now under way; Establishing three new joint Health & Safety Committees in certain banana associations; this is facilitated by new government legislation which gives these committees a strong regulatory framework; Creating four new workplace union committees and delivering training to hundreds of members and reps on health and safety, labour and gender rights For more information on our work and achievements with SITAG in Peru, or to donate, please visit: bananalink.org.uk/
partners‐peru. Testimonial: “Thanks to international trade unions we have received solidarity and support. Without it we would not have been able to become a leading trade union, one of the largest in Peru.” Fatima Herrera Olea, SITAG Peru bananalink.org.uk ●
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Building solidarity with Latin American partners
Supporting women workers in Ecuador
Banana Link have secured project funding from the Dutch Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH) to establish and or strengthen workplace Health and Safety Committees, in Ecuador and in Cameroon, respectively the two largest banana exporting countries in Latin American and Africa. With support from funders including the GMB International Solidarity Fund (bananalink.org.uk/gmb‐ international‐solidarity‐fund) Banana Link is enabling the Ecuadorian agro industrial workers union, FENACLE, to continue to implement a project to empower women workers in the banana and sugar industry by raising awareness about their rights and providing training on issues affecting women, including capacity building and leadership skills. So far, with project support, FENACLE’s Women’s Secretariat has: 
Successfully negotiated specific gender clauses in two CBAs 
Empowered women in leadership roles with one of the first ever women in the sector elected as General Secretary (of the Guayas Workers Association) 
Ensured that all workplace unions now have an elected Women’s Secretariat 
Achieved a 20% increase in women holding leadership roles in the union To make a donation to enable FENACLE to continue this work please visit bananalink.org.uk/donate As well as building North‐South solidarity links, Banana Link is committed to South-to-South solidarity
enabling South ‐South solidarity between our partners in Africa and Latin America to support the sharing of experience between unions, organising workers often employed by the same multinationals and supplying the same UK supermarkets. This November representatives of GAWU (Ghana), FAWU (Cameroon) and IUF Africa visited Colombia to learn from our union partners, SINTRAINAGRO, about their sector level collective bargaining agreement – which has secured the highest wages in the global banana export sector – gender work and education programme. We hope to enable further collaboration between African and Latin America unions at the International Conference of the World Banana Forum in the Dominican Republic in May, with a focus on supporting women activists to participate in the Global Meeting of Banana Women Workers that precedes this. bananalink.org.uk ●
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World Banana Forum
Banana Link is a founder member of the World Banana Forum (WBF), a multi‐stakeholder initiative which brings together all actors involved in global banana supply chains from plantation worker unions and small farmers, to the major fruit multinationals and supermarkets. We support out Southern partners, including Latin American unions, to participate fully in the activities of the Forum. Recent progress includes: 
Work towards payment of a ‘living wage’ in the banana industry. Concrete steps towards this is the Ecuadorian government’s strategy to raise the legal minimum wage to a living wage level and a commitment by Tesco to pay living wages on Tesco dedicated farms (which supply almost half of the bananas that they sell) by 2017. 
The publication of case studies celebrating best practice in labour relations in the banana industry with examples from Colombia, Nicaragua and Honduras (available in early 2015) to demonstrate the benefits of mature social dialogue to employers. Ways you can take action
Subscribe to our #makefruitfair newsletter to take part in online actions in
defence of workers rights and receive our newsletter. We’ll send you the
sectors latest news and our own actions on a bi-monthly basis — http://
eepurl.com/pnyFH.
Download our activist guide for creative fundraising ideas http://bit.ly/
SiOs4H.
Respond to our current Colombia appeal— http://www.bananalink.org.uk/womenworkers-face-crisis-uraba-colombia
Donate to support Banana Link in bringing vulnerable trade unionists and other partners to
the World Banana Forum. Your support can help us, not only to stop the decline in social and
environmental standards across the industry, but to bring a fairer deal for workers and
growers everywhere.
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