Doris lives in the Tobias Baglio barrio, Siquirres, Limón Province,
Costa Rica. Doris Calvo was the women's officer for Costa Rica's largest
banana workers' trade union SITRAP. She has visited Scotland twice.
During this visit Doris highlighted the huge problems facing workers:
the intimidation and blacklisting of trade union affiliates (in spite
of Costa Rica having a constitution which states that workers have the
right to free association), health problems such as sterility and birth
defects caused by agrochemicals, sexual harassment of female workers,
lack of child care facilities and its consequences for single working
mothers. She currently is involved in working in her local community
looking at alternative sources of income for the women of her barrio.
The text in the print was taken from Memoria del Fuego by
Uruguayan
author, Eduardo Galeano and describes banana workers' reality in 1928
and translates as follows:
During
those years the workers were obedient and cheap. They cut down the weeds
and bunches of bananas with machetes for less than a dollar a day and
accepted living in filthy dormitories and dying of malaria or tuberculosis.
Then they formed a trade union.
Jan
Nimmo
Doris
started working with the Dole Company at the age of 13. She worked on
the packing plants on various Dole plantations doing all the different
jobs on the plants. She also worked in the fields which is rare for a
female worker, spreading fertilizer and bagging the fruit in the blue
plastic bags which are impregnated with insecticides.
At
18 years old she left to have a family. She now has three children. At
25 years old she started work with Del Monte but as a trade union activist
she soon ran into problems. In the early 80's solidarismo* was
first imposed on workers by the banana companies, church and government.
The company refused to give her a permanent contact, obliging her to
work for 90 days then leave for two weeks and then come back for another
90 days and so on. She was also subject to serious sexual harassment.
She
eventually left Del Monte to work in a Costa Rican owned plantation,
La Siquirreña, but was put to work in the office where she had
no contact with filed or pack house workers. She was sacked from that
job in 1999 after refusing the sexual advances of one of the
plantation
administrators.
She
was put on the infamous "blacklist" which companies circulate
amongst themselves and so was refused work everywhere she went, even
in the local shops in Siquirres. Eventually she found work in Guapiles
(40 kms away).
She
worked as Women's Secretary with trade union, SITRAP .
She
is currently is involved in working in her local community looking at
alternative sources of income for the women of her barrio.
She
has visited Scotland twice on Banana Link speaker tours, one of which
was co-ordinated by World Development Movement Scotland.
*Solidarismo
is not a union.
Courtesy
of Banana Link
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