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Union-To-Union Programme

Home » Trade Unions » Union-To-Union Programme

Support Our Union-To-Union Programme

Our trade union partners in Latin America and Africa are extremely grateful for your continued solidarity and the generous donations received from union branches and regions in recent years. These funds have provided vital support for their activities. Some of the most significant gains made possible thanks to your donations are detailed below.

Our Focus

Our focus includes supporting the strategic work of regional networks, such as the Coordinating Body of Latin American Banana and Agro-industrial Unions (COLSIBA) and the International Union of Foodworkers‘ (IUF) Network of African Banana Workers Unions, as well as supporting unions to organise across agricultural sectors at national level.

Appeal For Donations

Many plantation workers continue to live in poverty and their most basic rights fail to be respected in the workplace. We are appealing for donations to allow us to continue to offer solidarity to our partner unions to challenge the repression of the freedom to organise, to educate workers about their rights, and empower their union representatives to bargain collectively for Decent Work for the men and women that grow the fruit sold in our supermarkets.

 

Union To Union Programme

You Can Make a One-Off Donation Here:

We are currently experiencing problems with our PayPal account, and cannot currently accept donations through it.

If you would like to make a one off or regular donation, you can do so using BACS to:

Account Name: Banana Link Limited
Bank: Cooperative Bank
Account number: 70288849
Sort code: 08-90-14

Or Send a Cheque To:

Banana Link, 51 Colegate
Norwich
NR3 1DD

Recommended Minimum Annual Donations:

£25 for individuals
£100 for union branches
£150 for union regions/divisions
£200 for national unions

Union-To-Union Solidarity in Action
Recent News and Activities

Third-party contractors using false documentation to hire migrant workers on Costa Rican banana and pineapple plantations, workers allege

Costa Rican union SITRAP and the Latin American union federation COLSIBA to which it is affiliated have formally denounced a series of labour violations and illegal hiring practices at two farms belonging to national company Grupo Acón. Fruit from these farms on the Costa Rican Caribbean coast is supplied to U.K. consumers via one of the country’s largest retailers. Banana Link understands the retailer is taking the matter seriously and has already initiated talks with their supplier and local workers union, SITRAP.

Read More

Retailers Commit to Ensuring Living Wages for all Banana Workers

The pledge to ensure living wages by the end of 2027 represents a major step forward for the banana industry, writes Alistair Smith, International Coordinator at Banana Link.

Read More

Worker- led Living Wage Verification Success in ALDI Pilot

Banana Link partnered with ALDI SOUTH Group and ALDI Nord in the first pilot to explore the role that trade unions can take in the verification of living wage data. The pilot was undertaken in 2022, with independent mediation from Heartwood LLC and the participation of Dole, Grupo Iren and Banafem in the first project of its kind to be undertaken in the banana industry.

Read More

Colombian women’s rights advocate Adela Torres elected as Coordinator of COLSIBA

Adela Torres, General Secretary of Colombian agricultural workers union SINTRAINAGRO, was elected as the new Coordinator of Latin American banana and agro-industrial trade union coordinating body, COLSIBA in late 2021. Adela will be the second woman to hold the post that represents workers in the highly male-dominated Latin American banana industry.

Read More

Women’s Empowerment and Leadership Training Project Launched in the Dominican Republic

Banana Link is coordinating a women’s empowerment and leadership training project in the Dominican Republic, which was launched in late November 2021.

The project will see a core group of 10 women workers and small farmers – from across the three main banana exporting provinces of the country – receive intensive leadership and empowerment training across a broad range of topics encompassing non- violence and harassment, Dominican labour law, certification policy and international standards, personal finances and digital literacy and communication skills. Once this first phase is completed, the training will be rolled out to a much larger group of women on Dominican farms and plantations using a ‘training the trainers’ methodology.

Read More

Tesco sets an example on living wages for plantation workers, who’s next?

In a move that is to be congratulated, and which hopefully sets an example for other supermarket chains, the UK’s largest retailer Tesco, has today announced a commitment to paying the living wage gap to banana producers, writes Banana Link Policy & Communications Coordinator, Paul Lievens.

Read More

Building union capacity in Costa Rica

Your donations have helped us to support capacity building and training for SITRAP, which has seen its membership growing at a rate of over one new member par day, while they have been able to secure new Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBA) at two Del Monte plantations. Funding has also enabled online communications training for union representatives and provisions of masks to members in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. They have also succeeded through legal efforts in getting 16 unfairly dismissed workers reinstated in their jobs in 2020.

Additionally, the union has been particularly successful in recruiting women members this year, because the Women’s Officer and the Executive Committee have made this a top priority by providing services that are highly relevant to women in their workplaces, childcare during all meetings, and by encouraging family members of worker members to participate in union events.

Read More

Training workshops in Ecuador and Guatemala

We have supported training workshops on labour issues, gender equity, health & safety, measures to prevent the spread of the TR4 fungal disease, Covid-19 and collective bargaining for the new independent union SINUTRABE in Ecuador, as well as support to SITRABI in Guatemala to organise education and training for plantation workers in several districts of the Pacific South, the source of one in every three bananas consumed in North America.

Read More

Hurricane relief in Honduras and Guatemala

Late last year, Hurricane Eta hit Central America, causing devastation to the banana producing regions of Northern Honduras and the Izabal region of Eastern Guatemala. Plantations suffered the effects of torrential rain, flooding and battering winds, and plantation workers homes, often situated within the plantations themselves, were also damaged, along with the roads that connected them to nearby towns.

With thousands of jobs at risk, and little or no state help for those who lost their homes, workers in Guatemala and Honduras have received support from their local unions in the form of basic food packages (pictured), with enough rice, beans, oil and other necessities to support a family for a month. Many are relying on this support, and that of other charitable and religious institutions, to survive, while they wait to find out if they can return to their homes and jobs, or not.

Read More

Support to FAWU amidst separatist violence in anglophone Cameroon

Banana Link has provided financial support to the Fako Agricultural Workers Union following attacks on plantations by militant Anglophone separatists resulting in the majority of banana plantations being closed down and the union struggling to survive.

Read More

More On Our Work With Trade Unions ...


COLSIBA

Cameroon

Colombia

Costa Rica

Dominican Republic

Ecuador

Ghana

Guatemala

Honduras

Peru

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NR3 1DD
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