News » August 11, 2003

Their Day in Court

Nicaraguan banana workers may finally get justice

By Megan Rowling

Claudia Blanco used to put in an exhausting workday at the Finca San Carlos banana plantation in Chinandega, Nicaragua. She would get up at 3 a.m. to prepare food for her children, leave for the plantation at 6 a.m., work in the fields all morning, and then pack bananas until 8 p.m.—all for a dollar a day. Meager as it was, she needed the money.

Two years ago, however, she was sacked for defending the workers’ right to a collective bargaining agreement. Now, as the women’s representative for the Rural Workers’ Association, she works to improve labor conditions for her colleagues, especially to win justice for workers poisoned by pesticides.

Health problems are rampant in Chinandega, including sterility, cancers, and birth defects in children. According to La Jornada, a third of women tested in Chinandega’s Profamilia clinic in mid-2001 were found to have breast or uterine cancer. Blanco herself recently had an operation for breast cancer, which she believes was caused by pesticide exposure. Specifically, Blanco and her colleagues are worried about dibromochloropropane (DBCP), a pesticide agent the United States banned in 1979 but which is still used on Nicaragua’s banana plantations. As yet, there is no scientific proof that such cancers are caused by DBCP, but research has shown that the agent causes sterility in men, and it is now widely thought to increase the risk of tumors.

Attorney Walter Gutiérrez has sued several multinationals that allegedly sold or used pesticides containing the chemical in Nicaragua. “The companies’ obligation was to let the workers know [DBCP was potentially harmful], so that they could protect themselves,” Gutiérrez argues. “This stuff was dumped on them.”

Last December, a Nicaraguan judge ordered Dow Chemical, Shell Chemical, and Standard Fruit (an affiliate of Dole Food Co.) to pay $489 million to 468 banana workers allegedly affected by DBCP. So far, however, the companies have refused to recognize the ruling.

The workers have filed suit in Los Angeles to get the judgment enforced in the United States, but Dow and Shell have hit back, requesting that the case be transferred from state to federal court, a tactic that aims to ensure that the lawsuit is heard without a jury. Attorney Christian Hartley recently won a Supreme Court case to stop Dole from getting a similar lawsuit transferred to a federal court. Now he expects the suit to resume in the Hawaii State Court this autumn after a six-year delay.

Dole argued in a May 6 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that a Nicaraguan law enacted in 2001 permitting the banana workers to prosecute multinationals is “unconstitutional and violates international due process.” And the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative identified the law as an obstacle to investment in this year’s report on foreign trade barriers. In the coming months, U.S. officials negotiating the Central America Free Trade Agreement will be aiming to establish rules that prevent similar legislation.

Litigation may be banana workers’ best hope to protect themselves from DBCP, according to Arthur Frank, professor of public health at Drexel University. “More progress is made in the protection of consumers and workers in the law courts than in any other branch of government,” he explains. “When companies are attacked in their pocketbooks, they see to making changes.”

In the face of growing concern, many multinationals involved in the banana industry say they are now making efforts to conduct their business in an environmentally and socially responsible manner. Yet voluntary codes of conduct have not provided adequate safeguards. Alistair Smith, international co-ordinator for Banana Link, a British organization that campaigns for sustainable production and trade in bananas, says companies could do more: “We can’t expect these companies to do away with chemicals completely. But we can expect them to rationalize their use, and look for alternative, less toxic methods of production.”

Meanwhile, Gutiérrez says that three Nicaraguan banana workers die a month of DBCP-related diseases, unable to pay for medical treatment. For some, the outcome of the current legal proceedings and any resulting compensation will come too late to make a difference.

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• Reader Comments

  One more instance of big corporations taking advantage of countries in need of investments and people in need of jobs.Big corporations protected by our laws and given free rein by trade agreements. For what? For the enrichment of the corrupt national leaders that give away the countriy’s natural resources, and the health and life of needy workers. All for one dollar per day.What a bargain!

  Posted by pablo on Aug 11, 2003 at 12:21 PM

  This article points out another example of the consequences of allowing corporations to amass great wealth from tax breaks, etc. Their control of resources permits them to set-up where conditions are most favorable, where they can operate with comparative impunity, and they often relocate very quickly when problems catch up with them. My concern is for the injured workers and affected neighbors. A similar situation exists where I live.

  Posted by Dean Brooks on Aug 18, 2003 at 9:05 PM

  The largest and wealthiest corporations in the world have their home-base in the United States, Canada, Europe and Japan. These corporations spend tens of millions of dollars each year in legal fees to block the growing number of transnational lawsuits that are being brought by workers, families and the poor against corporations. In their defence, the corporations use the century-old common law doctrine of forum non conveniens (inconvenient forum)—they are almost always successful in stopping the lawsuits. Nicaragua responded by passing a law that allows its citizens to sue the foreign corporations that manufactured pesticides containing DBCP in Nicaraguan courts. The US corporations that are affected by these lawsuits also spend millions each year to pay lobbyists who push their agenda in Washington. These lobbyists have persuaded the US government to put pressure on Nicaragua to change their laws. Thus, political, economic and legal power is used by the wealthiest corporations of the world to maintain a system that perpetuates inequality and injustice. More information about the DBCP cases and related transnational cases can be found in my article published in the Texas International Law Journal called Towards Transnational Corporate Accountability in the Global Economy: Challenging the Doctrine of Forum Non Conveniens in Re: Union Carbide, Alfaro, Sequihua and Aguinda. Vol 36, No. 2, Spring 2001. 

  Posted by Malcolm Rogge on Aug 29, 2003 at 9:23 AM

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