Dear Commissioners Reynders and Breton,
We – a group of human rights, labour rights and development organizations – welcome the European Commission’s commitment to ensure that the economic recovery will be fairer and more sustainable as we come out of this unprecedented health crisis. In this letter, we wish to highlight the need to ensure responsible purchasing practices by businesses to ensure decent work conditions for workers in producing countries and a sustainable post-crisis economic recovery.
The COVID-19 crisis has evidenced the volatility and vulnerability of global supply chains. It has demonstrated how companies currently externalise risks and costs towards weaker supply chain partners. These business models and purchasing practices then, in turn, cause or contribute to adverse human rights impacts on workers, smallholders, communities and the environment, both in the EU and in third countries.
Dear Commissioners Reynders and Breton,
We – a group of human rights, labour rights and development organizations – welcome the European Commission’s commitment to ensure that the economic recovery will be fairer and more sustainable as we come out of this unprecedented health crisis. In this letter, we wish to highlight the need to ensure responsible purchasing practices by businesses to ensure decent work conditions for workers in producing countries and a sustainable post-crisis economic recovery.
The COVID-19 crisis has evidenced the volatility and vulnerability of global supply chains. It has demonstrated how companies currently externalise risks and costs towards weaker supply chain partners. These business models and purchasing practices then, in turn, cause or contribute to adverse human rights impacts on workers, smallholders, communities and the environment, both in the EU and in third countries.
Trade unions make a big difference for Guatemalan banana workers
According to a new report – What Difference Does a Union Make?: Banana Plantations in the North and South of Guatemala – published by the Center for Global Workers Rights at Penn State University in the US, there are stark differences in pay and working conditions for unionised and non-unionised workers in the Guatemalan banana industry.
Guatemala is currently the third largest exporting country of bananas in the world, and by far the largest exporter of bananas to North America, with two exporting areas: one on the southern Pacific coast, which is non-unionised and represents 85 percent of employment in the sector, and the other in the north where nearly all workers employed in banana plantations are unionised.