This story
was taken from Bulatlat, the Philippines's alternative weekly
newsmagazine (www.bulatlat.com, www.bulatlat.net, www.bulatlat.org).
Vol. V, No. 18, June 12-18, 2005
LABOR WATCH
Currents of Unrest at Compostela’s Big Banana
Plantations 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 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, 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. 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. "These agricultural workers
are slowly dying from the hands of these big capitalists raking in huge
profits," said Basilio. In their case, Daite said,
they earn a net income of a measly P13 per box (containing 12 kilos) of banana
under the price set by Stanfilco. This, despite the fact that costs of
production have gone higher while banana exporters are making a killing out of
banana exports. Current prices of banana in the foreign market, based on the
monitoring of the union, are now $35 a kilo. With a losing income,
growers are protesting that they could hardly pay the debts that are now passed
on to them by the company. The banks too are now going after them and are bound
to confiscate the growers’ property which is held as collateral because of
unpaid loans. These conditions are now
causing agitation not only among farmworkers who are now clamoring against
unjust labor practices, but also farm owners who see the danger of losing out
their lands to such schemes. © 2004 Bulatlat
■
Alipato Publications Permission is granted to reprint or redistribute this article, provided its author/s and Bulatlat are properly credited and notified.
Bulatlat Mindanao Bureau
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
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.
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.
Romualdo Basilio, chairman of Kumilos, lamented that the FOB has affected all
agricultural workers in Compostela. Other farms such as those of Marsman in the
towns
of Mawab, Nabunturan and Pantukan, the Dizon Farm in Monkayo and the Davao Fruit
farms in other towns of Compostela Valley are imposing the scheme, he said.
Unfortunately, Basilio said, workers of these farms have no union thus making
them vulnerable to such ploy. Kumilos has tried to reach out to workers in these
areas.
But in these agro-corporate farms unionizing faces obstacles. Military elements
who are reportedly employed by companies harass union organizers and the
companies themselves are imposing harsher policies to discourage unionizing.
Even growers are affected
Farmworkers are not alone whose lives, they have, have become
miserable under the FOB. Small farmowners or growers too are victims under this
system. They complain that they too are not free from this type of manipulation
by big banana corporations. In fact, many of them have joined the recent Labor
Day protest in Davao City streets.
Alberto Daite, who owns a piece of land in Maragusan, entered into a growership
agreement with Stanfilco in 1993. In a memorandum of agreement (MoA) he signed
with
the company, he entrusted his land certificate title to the company, renting out
the land for 25 years.
In exchange, the company was supposed to provide financing for farm inputs and
labor costs, from planting, growing, harvesting up to processing and packing of
bananas. The company has the sole purchasing right to their harvest under prices
that they dictate.
Daite said he only learned later that Stanfilco used their land title as
collateral with the Land Bank where the company sourced the amount they used to
finance the growers.
But such financing offered by the plantation company was true before. Today, the
current FOB scheme has forced the growers to the wall – they now take the sole
burden of financing the operations. The plantation companies are mere buyers of
the growers’ products under terms the former dictate unfairly.
Unpaid loans
As more farmlands are being sought for expansion of banana plantations in the
adjoining provinces of Davao del Norte and Compostela Valley, Manong Berto is
seeing the situation as a challenge for him and for the rest of agricultural
workers in the province to form unions so that they can collectively protect
their rights and welfare. Bulatlat