Labor contractualization and other new schemes in Compostela Valley’s large banana plantations are agitating both farmworkers and small growers for wage increase and union rights.

By Gilbert Pacificar
Bulatlat Mindanao Bureau
Bulatlat.com

Compostela Valley Province – The woes of plantation workers in this top banana-producing province in Mindanao are mounting as big plantation corporations are enforcing another device to lower their wages, scrap their benefits, retrench them, or reduce their status into mere contractual workers.

As a result, many banana plantation workers are forced to either turn to unions for assistance, form their own unions if they do not have one, or put up with the insecurities of the job wrought by the new employers’ schemes.

One of the banana plantation workers affected is Norberto Charcoz who works at one of the five banana plantations of Standard (Philippines) Incorporated or Stanfilco in Maragusan town, this province. Stanfilco is a division of Dole Philippines, Inc. in Compostela, more than 76 kms from Tagum City. It produces Cavendish bananas mainly for export.

While aging people are supposed to be resting and already enjoying retirement, you can still find Manong (elder brother) Norberto, at 88, in an ordinary day either cleaning the grounds under chemical-sprayed and cellophane-wrapped bananas, if not harvesting them. He has been doing this for nine years since he was hired as a worker in 1996 and eventually regularized.

Nong Berto does not mind the toil under the scorching heat of the sun. He said he values this work because, for him, this is the only way he could feed his entire family and send his three children to school.

When the company he works for imposed the growership system last year, regular workers of the rest of the four other Stanfilco farms were retrenched. There were about 2,000 farm workers who were retrenched from the four farms of Stanfilco, according to Kaisahan ng Uring Manggagawa para Isulong ang Laban sa Uri at Sambayanan (Kumilos), a labor organization based in the adjoining provinces of Compostela Valley and Davao del Norte.

Farm 98

As a result, only Farm 98, where he works, has regular workers nowadays. Manong Norberto is proud their union has weathered union busting attempts and managed to keep their status as regular workers.

Another scheme

But this year, Manong Norberto and his co-workers have to hurdle another test. Stanfilco, which ranks among the major exporters of banana in the region, has recently imposed the Freight-on-Board (FOB) scheme.

Just this April, Manong Norberto told Bulatlat that he and his co-worker, Martiniano Gorgonio, were shocked to learn that the management ordered the employees’ transfer to another area, this time to work only as mere harvester under the FOB scheme.

The Stanfilco management said that their length of service will be paid at one time by the company in exchange for being converted later from regular to contractual worker.

This would mean reduced wages, from P192 a day to only P162. As a contractual worker, benefits such as overtime and hazard pay will be scrapped, too.

Sadly, many of Manong Norberto’s fellow workers have submitted themselves to the scheme. He is one of the remaining farmworkers who refused to submit to this scheme.

Joel Devino, new president of Maragusan United Workers Union (MUWU), said that the FOB scheme has affected 379 workers or 20 percent of Farm 98’s labor force.

Most of the farm workers who were hastily shifted to contractual status were those in service for seven years, Devino also said. But even if they were forced to give up rights just to get the cash offer, they still ended up with a small pay, he added. Each payment, they were told, has a cap of only Php 25,000.

Devino believes, the FOB scheme “only legitimizes further the contractualization policy of the government,” another condition, he said, that makes life more miserable to workers like Manong Norberto.

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