Chiquita: Verde e amarela

In the distinctly agro-industrial region of northern Costa Rica, devoted primarily to pineapple and banana crops, more than 200 Chiquita Brands workers were illegally dismissed so that the transnational corporation could evict them and demolish their houses. We spoke about this with Didier Leitón Valverde, general secretary of the Union of Agricultural Plantation Workers (SITRAP).

FESTRAS union leader brutally beaten

Odilia Caal Có, local leader in a branch of the IUF-affiliated Federación Sindical de Trabajadores de la Alimentación y Afines Servicios y Similares (FESTRAS) was brutally beaten earlier this month in an attack which left her with multiple injuries including a broken rib. The attack took place in an export processing zone (maquiladora) on the premises of Winners Textil.

We are all Odilia Caal Có

Odilia Caal Có, general secretary of the Winner Workers’ Union (Sitrawinner), was held against her will in the offices of the company, where she was beaten and threatened until she signed a statement withdrawing from the union. The Korean-owned Winners Textil maquiladora company makes clothes for several companies that are very well-known around the globe. In that microcosm, labor persecution is characterized by brutally violent practices and vicious harassment.

Faces in the smoke

Impunity, greed, economic, social, and political terrorism perpetrated by criminal elites, foolishness, hypocrisy, and ignorance—these are the real fuels igniting the Amazon fires. The forest is being consumed in those fires, along with thousands of human beings whose lives are deemed to be worth less than the spark that sets off the fires.

“United we triumph”

Workers organized in the Number 1 and 2 Unions of Nestlé Graneros and the Nestlé Los Ángeles Union voted on July 24 to go on strike to pressure the transnational corporation into sitting down to negotiate with Labor Ministry mediators.

Nestlé Chile: unfair and anti-union

The president of the Number 2 Union of Nestlé Graneros denounces the difficulties workers are facing in the collective bargaining process, the obstacles placed by the company in the way of plant-level unions, and management’s failure to recognize labor organization.