> December
> 4, 1994.
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> URGENT ACTION GUATEMALA URGENT ACTION GUATEMALA URGENT.
>
> JUSTICE FOR COFFEE WORKERS.
>
> "Most of the women who work
> picking cotton or
> coffee
> ...have nine or ten children with
> them. Of these, three
> or four will be more or less
> healthy, and can survive, but
> most of them have bellies
> swollen from malnutrition and
> the mother knows that four or
> five of her childre could die...
> Two of my brothers died in the
> finca."
> I,
> Rigoberta
> Menchu
> 1993 Nobel
> Peace Prize
> Winner
> Dear Friends,
>
> The Guatemala Labor Education Project, based in the United States
> initiated a justice campaign for coffee workers in Guatemala. For
> years, U. S. based Companies have sold coffee picked by workers
> who are paid such miserable wages that they can't afford an
> adequate diet, basic health care, or an extra change of clothes
> for their children. The campaign seeks to begin changing this
> situation. The goal is to persuade companies to take
> responsibility for the coffee they sell by SETTING MINIMUM
> STANDARDS FOR WAGES AND WORKING CONDITIONS that must be met by
> plantations from which they buy coffee. This is not a call for a
> boycott.
>
> Some prominent U.S. companies like Levi's and Reebok have in
> recent years adopted CODES OF CONDUCT for the suppliers of the
> goods they sell. But no such code has been adopted by U.S. coffee
> companies, buyers of one-third of the world's coffee. The
> campaign is starting with Guatemala, one of this hemisphere's
> poorest and most repressive countries and a leading supplier of
> U.S. gourmet coffee. And the campaign begins with the company
> STARBUCKS, the fastest growing gourmet coffee chain in the U.S.
> and in Canada and a leading importer of Guatemalan coffee. We are
> requesting that Starbucks adopt a CODE OF CONDUCT setting forth
> basic conditions (E.G. no child labor, compliance with labor law,
> no repression against workers who organize unions, fair wages )
> that must be met by their business partners who produce the coffee
> these retailers sell. These codes of conduct establish the
> fundamental principle that companies can and should take
> responsibility for the working conditions of their suppliers,
> whether at home and abroad. A code of conductfor plantations that
> grow starbucks coffee would be ground-breaking. The proposed code
> would include requirements that plantation owners pay a living
> wage, provide sanitary housing, provide safe and healthy
> workplaces, respect freedom of association and do not practice
> discrimination.
> BACKGROUND INFORMATION.
> The low wages in the coffee sector are a major factor in
> condemning 70% of the Guatemalan people to extreme poverty since
> coffee employs 40% of Guatemala's work-force. Over 70% of
> children in rural areas where coffee is the dominant crop suffer
> from malnutrition. For a family of five in rural Guatemala to
> meet their minimum requirements, the Guatemalan National Institute
> of Statistics estimates that they would need about $7.25 a day.
> Yet the legal minimum wage has until recently been only $2 a day -
> and even this meager wage has usually not been paid. According to
> Guatemalan agricultural worker organizations, between 60% and 80%
> of coffee plantations failed to pay the $2 minimum daily wage as
> of September 1994. While the minimum wage was raised to $2.50 in
> October 1994, it was not accompanied by increased compliance.
>
> Typically, the 300,000 coffee workers who work year-round on
> plantations are housed in shacks with dirt-floors and no running
> water. During the harvest season, another 375,000 "temporary"
> workers are brought in to pick the coffee berries that are then
> dried into beans for export. These temporary workers face even
> worse conditions and pay. Plantation owners demand short-term, 15
> day contracts in order to side-step legal requirements to provide
> basic benefits and rights. Often entire families, including young
> children, work the ten- and twelve-hour days together but only the
> father is paid one day's wages. Women who work alone are almost
> always paid less than men. Coffee workers also face health and
> safety risks, particularly from the unprotected use of pesticides.
> One of Rigoberta Menchu's brothers died from pesticides sprayed by
> an airplane. Workers are fighting back, demanding fair wages and
> working conditions. But they do so at great risk: workers who
> demand simply the rarely-paid legal minimum wage, are often
> fired, threatened with death or even murdered. The legal system
> doesn't function, except to defend the owners and the military.
>
> Starbucks in Guatemala Starbucks has claimed that the plantations
> from which it buys in Guatemala tend to pay higher wages and have
> better conditions than other plantations. Payment of the legal
> wage is itself better than what most plantations do, but this wage
> is hardly something of which Starbucks should be proud, nor are
> the living conditions on this plantation. As one worker stated,
> the minimum wage "can't even support a family. It is insufficient
> for necessities." Yet, the 100 pounds of coffee picked by the
> average worker in one day, for which s/he earns $2 (or 2 cents a
> pound), is retailed in the U.S at $9 a pound by Starbucks for a
> total of $900. The company provides information about some water
> projects in Guatemala. This is a positive aspect but does not
> substitute the social responsibility that the company has towards
> the workers in the coffee plantations.
> RECOMMENDED ACTION.
> Please write to Starbucks % urging them to adopt a code of conduct
> to ensure economic decency and basic rights for workers at
> plantations from which it buys, with Guatemala as a pilot project.
> %Write a note to your closest Starbucks store requesting them
> that the company adopt a code of conduct. % please inform your
> family, friends, church or union about this action. Appeals to:
> Mr. Howard Schultz Chief Executive Officer, Starbucks Coffee
> Company, P.O. Box 34110, Seattle, WA 98124 -1110. Tel.
> 206-447-1575; Fax: 206-682-7570
>
> THANK YOU FOR YOUR RESPONSE AND SUPPORT IN 1994.
>
> WE HOPE THAT 1995 IS A GOOD YEAR FOR YOU.
>
>