Chiquita Takes Reprisals Against Striking Banana Workers

by Silvio Hernandez

The workers decided to return to work Apr. 17 to avoid a dispute settlement that would have forced the strikers to pay Chiquita Brands millions of dollars in damages if a ruling came down on the side of the company, said the Secretary-General of the company union, Jose Morris.

In spite of the government's failure to prevent the dismissal of 270 stevedores in Puerto Armuelles, located at the southwestern tip of Panama in the province of Chiriqui on the Pacific ocean, the workers left it up to the government to settle the dispute.

According to Chiquita Brands' head of labor relations Oscar Fonseca, the company's decision to suspend shipments of fruit through Puerto Armuelles was based on economic reasons. The bananas produced in the province of Chiriqui, where the strike took place, and in the Caribbean province of Bocas del Toro, have begun to be sold to Europe, which means that shipping them out of a port on the Pacific ocean no longer makes sense, he explained.

Shipping the containers of bananas from the Caribbean port of Rambala in Bocas del Toro, located at the northwestern tip of Panama, will cut the route of the company's boats by some 1,500 kms, and save them the cost of the Panama Canal toll, which averages $30,000 per vessel.

The fruit will now be transported by road over the 250 kilometers separating Puerto Armuelles and the port of Rambala.

After the strike ended, Fonseca said it would be difficult for Chiquita Brands to keep its plantations and packing plants functioning, due to damages on the plantations. However, he did not announce dismissals at that time.

But press secretary of the Puerto Armuelles branch of the company union Carlos Acosta reported that nearly 1,700 stevedores, plantation workers and packing plant employees -- including more than 400 women -- were given notice on April 22.

Bananas are the main source of jobs in Puerto Armuelles, a town of 15,000.

The union told the workers not to sign the notice of dismissal because Chiquita Brands failed to follow the procedures for laying off employees outlined by the collective labor agreement on hiring and firing.

Deputy Carlos Smith of the governing Democratic Revolutionary Party, meanwhile, urged parliament to investigate "the wave of dismissals in Chiquita Brands." Smith warned that the situation in Puerto Armuelles could turn into a "serious case of public disorder" when the laid-off workers found themselves with no income.

The 57-day strike in Chiriqui kept Chiquita Brands from exporting 1.6 million 18.14 kg-boxes of bananas, according to a report by the governmental National Banana Commission, which adds that the drop in exports led to $7.1 million in losses. Bananas, Panama's chief export, brought the country $160 million in 1997.