Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
mass markets. Furthermore, the number of women who managed to get
full-timejobsinthepackingplantsduringthe1960swassmallandinitially
limited to individuals with a spouse or male family member employed by
one of the companies.
The opportunity to work in a packing plant exacted both physical
and emotional costs.Women uniformlydescribed theirdays in theempa-
cadoras as exhausting. They performed repetitive tasks at a high rate of
speed for anywhere from ten to fourteen hours. Breaks were limited to a
half-hour lunch break around 11 and a second break in the late afternoon
onoccasionswhenpackingoperationsextendedintothelateevening.The
work environment could also be debilitating. Fruit selectors constantly
had to dip their hands into the water tanks in the process of grading the
bananas. Some women considered this to be the least desirable job in the
empacadora.Pepe Puerta, a former packing plant supervisor for Standard
Fruit, recalled that ''they [the women] used to say that the dampness af-
fected them.''
115
He also believed that some workers developed tumors as
a result of theirexposure to the chemicals used in theempacadorasto pre-
ventcrownrot(afungus)fromdevelopingwhilethebananaswereintran-
sit. From the fruit companies' perspective, severe cases of crown rot ren-
dered the bananas ''commercially unacceptable.''
116
United Fruit initially
used a Dithane dip to prevent crown rot. Around 1965, the companies
began adding chlorine to the water tanks in order to control the fungus.
Three years later, the industry switched to a systemic fungicide (Thia-
bendazole) following its approval for use on bananas by the U.S. Food and
Drug Administration.
117
Workers applied Thiabendazole with the aid of a
sprayer that showered the fruit just prior to boxing.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, there is no evidence that either the
fruit companies or union o
cials provided packing plant workers with
safety instructions and/or protective apparel such as gloves or masks.
Esperanza recalled that she worked ten years in the empacadora ''with-
out protecting myself, always wet, with my arms exposed to the sprays
[fungicides].''
118
Other women confirmed the absence of protective cloth-
ing. An illustrated instructional manual for United Fruit's packing plant
workers makes no mention of protective clothing and depicts a bare-
handed worker dipping fruit into a solution of ''disinfectant'' (presum-
ably dithane) strongly suggesting that the women and men who labored
in packing plants during the 1960s and early 1970s received frequent ex-
posure to more than just dampness.
Although some workers in the packing plants, including the ex-
supervisor Pepe Puerta, expressed concerns about chronic exposure to