Help SITRABI celebrate their 75th anniversary

Aim

To celebrate their 75th anniversary, SITRABI is raising money towards publishing a booklet documenting their history.

SITRABI, the Izabal Banana Workers’ Union, is the oldest private sector union in Guatemala and represents over 3000 workers in Del Monte and their supplier farms on the Caribbean coast.

Guatemala has been described as the most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists by the International Trade Union Confederation. Since 2007, a total of 68 trade union leaders and representatives have been murdered, and a high number of attempted murders, kidnappings, break-ins, and death threats have been reported, along with torture. Eleven of the union’s leaders were murdered between 2008 and 2012, including the brother of then General Secretary Noé Ramirez. 

That SITRABI has survived and continued their struggle over 75 years is testament to the courage and determination of their members and leadership. 

The effectiveness of SITRABI in defending workers on plantations and achieving better pay and working conditions is also highlighted in a recent report - What Difference Does a Union Make?: Banana Plantations in the North and South of Guatemala – published by the  Centre for Global Workers Rights. The report documents the stark comparisons between pay and working conditions on plantations in the unionised north of the country compared to the non-unionised south. This includes:

• Non-unionised workers earn less than half the hourly pay of unionised workers and work 12 hours per week more.
• Non-union workers are 81 percent more likely to face verbal abuse than union workers. 
• 58 percent of women in non-union banana packing plants face sexual harassment at work compared to eight percent of women at unionised packing plants. 

You can read the report here: https://www.bananalink.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/What-Difference-Does-a-Union-Make_January-2021.pdf

And listen to a podcast we recorded with the author of the report, Mark Anner, here: https://soundcloud.com/bananalink/podcast-what-difference-does-a-trade-union-make

If you are able to make a donation to support the production of the booklet for the anniversary in March, you can do so as outlined below. We will send a copy of the booklet to all donors once it is published. 

This project successfully funded on 14th February 2022