Fresh food firm Chiquita has detected a marked increase in worker satisfaction and commitment to the company since it began a programme of social and environmental improvement two years ago.
Workers in its Latin American banana operations think the overall ethical performance of the company has improved since it was certified under the Rainforest Alliance’s Better Banana Project, employee feedback surveys suggest. The project, which began in 1991, aims to improve the quality of life for workers and to cut agrochemical use.
The most marked improvement was in Guatemala, where workers employed on Chiquita farms rated the company’s performance as ‘good’ on 17 out of 23 criteria, ‘very good’ on one, and ‘bad’ on only five. In 2000, prior to certification, they rated the company as ‘good’ on only five criteria and ‘bad’ on all the others.
Areas judged by workers to have improved from bad to good were treatment of employees, recognition of family needs and cultural differences, open dialogue, responsible community behaviour and concern for the environment.
There was a similar ‘significant’ improvement in Costa Rica and ‘generally positive’ results in Chiquita’s other banana operations in Colombia, Honduras and Panama.
However, there were some setbacks: in Panama, where there have been industrial relations problems, worker perceptions of company integrity and honest communication have worsened since 2000.
The findings are based on interviews with 641 workers in six banana divisions – 3.4 per cent of the 19,000 strong workforce in those sections – and appear in Chiquita’s second corporate responsibility report, which is verified by the Banana and Agroindustrial Unions of Honduras and the Guatemala-based Commission for the Verification of Corporate Codes of Conduct (Coverco).
Coverco said the company had made good progress. Its next ‘major challenge’ would be to assess the social performance of independent supplier farms, which account for about 50 per cent of the company’s banana production.
The Chiquita report says that in 2001, 33 per cent of the bananas it bought from independent suppliers in Latin America came from farms certified under the Better Banana Project and that it would seek to increase that percentage.
Chiquita has been assessing wage and benefit levels in all of its Latin American divisions to find out whether these cover basic needs. The ‘basic needs wage assessments’ will be analyzed over the next few months and the findings published.
Preliminary figures suggest that Chiquita pays around twice the legal minimum wage in Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras and Panama, and about one and a half times the legal minimum in Costa Rica.
Among bottom line benefits, Chiquita says it saved $3.8million (£2.4m) last year by using recycled materials.