Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
prayed hard because two months after the strike concluded, severe flood-
ing wiped out thousands of hectares of bananas in the Sula valley. The
companyrespondedbydismissingsome3,000workersinNovember1954,
striking a blow to the fledgling Tela Railroad Company Workers Union.
SITRATERCO o
cials reported to the press that they had convinced
company management to refrain from laying off an additional 7,000 em-
ployees, but a company-issued statement only acknowledged that man-
agement had agreed to keep the number of firings to the ''fewest pos-
sible.''
40
A U.S. embassyo
cial reported that rank-and-file members were
upset over the inability of union leaders to prevent mass layoffs. The Tela
Railroad Company made small severance payments to dismissed workers
and allowed them to cultivate crops on company lands that lay fallow.
In addition, the Honduran government requested relief supplies from the
United States and organized an emergency public works program that
provided highway-building jobs for laid-off banana workers. However,
a U.S. ocial warned that any long-term solution to the unemployment
problem would remain out of reach until the company ''settles the basic
question of whether operations will be built up again to 'normal' or pre-
flood levels, or will be resumed on permanently lower levels.''
41
An answer came two years later when the Tela Railroad Company
organizedatourof itsrehabilitatedoperationsforrepresentativesof Hon-
duranbanks,commercialestablishments,industry,andthenationalpress.
Companyocials explained that the spread of Panama disease, combined
with market demand for ''high quality'' fruit, reduced the viability of re-
cuperating ''marginal lands.'' Consequently, the area under production
would never again equal pre-1954 levels, nor would the company ''main-
tain as many employees as in the past.''
42
This proved to be an under-
statement: between 1953 and 1957, the Tela Railroad Company slashed its
Honduran payroll nearly in half (from about 26,000 to just over 13,000
workers) while land under active banana cultivation declined from some
16,000 hectares to 11,300 hectares between 1953 and 1959.
43
The number
of employees hired by United Fruit fell to a low of 8,800 persons in 1961.
Standard Fruit's response to the 1954 strikewas equallydramatic: afterex-
panding both its banana plantings and its workforce in the early 1950s,
the company cut its payroll from 13,000 to 9,000 between 1954 and 1955.
Entering the 1960s, the company employed fewer than 5,800 persons.
44
Standard's payroll continued to diminish through 1967, when it dipped
below the 5,000 mark.
The fruit companies pursued two basic strategies for cutting jobs:
contracting out labor-intensive production processes and investing in
