Now there’s blood even in your bananas

Be careful when you peel open your fresh bananas from the Philippines – it’s oozing with blood.

The Philippines’ fast-growing export of million tons of fresh bananas mainly to Japan and to the Middle East, worth $300 million from January to September alone of 2006, are tainted with its workers’ blood, said Tony Pascual, secretary general of National Federation of Labor Unions-Kilusang Mayo Uno (NAFLU-KMU).

‘Blood in your bananas’ summarizes the grim state of plantation and packing workers as they rail against militarization of their homes and trade union issues that recently claimed a union member’s life and injured four others, including Vicente Barrios, a union president who was the real target of the killing.

Compostela Valley in Southern Mindanao is a major site of the Philippines’ rapidly growing banana export industry. Lorded over mainly by Andres Soriano’s Fresh Bananas Agricultural Company (FBAC), now under the Japanese transnational Sumitomo Fruits Corporation, workers here have for years been so shoddily treated as below-minimum wage earners. FBAC has been shirking its responsibility as their employers, pointing instead to the small landowners, now called ‘growers,’ or to the cabo-like labor contractors, even as FBAC clearly controls the production, packing and distribution of banana export.

But the banana plantation workers started agitating for their legally mandated rights in 2004. Nagkahiusang Mamumuo ng Suyapa Farms (United Workers of Suyapa Farms NAMASUFA), led by Vicente Barrios, is one of the first successful unions to have done so. Their success inspired workers from other packing plants in organizing their unions and working for humane working conditions. But the spread of militancy in the banana export industry has also invited militarization and armed intimidation.

Armed attack on workers follows pattern of political killings

NAFLU-KMU’s Pascual shared their key findings as they wrapped up investigations on the armed attack to an unarmed convoy of union officers and members who were on their way to work at the banana ‘Packing Plant 90’ in Compostela Valley on the morning of December 17, 2006.

“The armed attack was the bloodiest and most murderous but it was just the latest in a two year-long series of armed harassments against the militant workers by hooded armed men and elements of the Compostela Valley-based 28th Infantry Brigade,” said Pascual.

“The attack is not a mere criminal act, it has political motives,” said the fact-finding team led by representatives from the church, human rights groups, KMU and youth organizations. Their report noted that “in less than two years, because of their concerted effort, the members of Nagkahiusang Mamumuo ng Suyapa Farms (United Workers of Suyapa Farms NAMASUFA) have claimed their years of underpayment, unpaid benefits and incentives and their members’ minimum wage rates.” Concluded the fact-finding team, “the perpetrators have much to gain if they manage to silence the union leaders, Barrios especially.”

The attack is also seen as “not an isolated case of waylaying; it is systematic and planned and follows a general mode of operation and pattern of political killings.” According to the fact-finding team, the “method, the circumstances and all other salient facets of the attack more or less fit those of documented cases of killings and harassments of party-list members, workers, peasants, activists and media workers, among others.”

Unarmed unionists treated as enemies of the state

“We urge all well-meaning citizens to help press the Arroyo government to stop treating militant unionists as enemies of the state,” said Tony Pascual. “We hope the government will respect the workers’ human and trade union rights, instead of treating them as criminals whenever they act collectively, within the bounds of law, to work for humane working conditions,” he added.

According to Pascual, the events in Southern Mindanao where NAFLU-KMU has a regional chapter throws in stark relief the Arroyo government’s “diabolical” treatment of workers. Since two years ago when banana plant and packing workers began forming unions and agitating for the legally mandated minimum wage rates at least, elements of the 28th Infantry Battalion have also started harassing them in their barangays, shared Pascual.

Armed men hiding their faces in bonnets would barge into their homes with high-powered firearms. Union leaders are openly under armed men’s surveillance. Vicente Barrios and fellow officers, for instance, have repeatedly been questioned by the military and other armed men. He’d been slingshot at least once. And recently, while other banana plantation workers in Compostela Valley were on strike, the military jailed and tightly guarded in a gym some 70 of the striking workers. “The military told the jailed workers, ‘don’t join the union or KMU and we will not jail you.’”

Said NAFLU-KMU’s Tony Pascual: “If these are the Arroyo government’s responses to workers’ legally recognized demands for fair wages and working condition, then contrary to their accusations, it’s the Arroyo government itself who’s urging the workers to join the New People’s Army, not the KMU.”