Panama’s Mulino to push for Chiquita’s return after mass layoffs, blasts lawsuit threats

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By Sarah Morland

PANAMA CITY (Reuters) -Panama’s President Jose Raul Mulino on Thursday blasted reports of a possible lawsuit against banana giant Chiquita, which fired all its local day workers due to a strike, as he prepares to negotiate the firm’s return to the country next week.

Mulino said in a press conference he would likely meet with a top Chiquita executive on August 29 during his trip to Brazil.

Chiquita rapidly fired over 6,000 workers in Panama’s western province of Bocas del Toro over a nationwide strike over a pension reform that began late April. It launched the layoffs late May and its management left Panama by early June.

The company estimated some $75 million in losses over the strike.

Mulino has backed the company, saying a labor court had ruled the strike illegal and the layoffs were a legitimate response.

Asked about plans by union leader Francisco Smith to sue the company, Mulino blasted Smith and “his henchmen” as those responsible for the firm leaving the country and argued the union no longer existed as the firm had left.

“He’d better keep a low profile, because it’s not in his best interest to go around shouting crazy things in the street,” Mulino told reporters. “He is under a restraining order and is being criminally prosecuted.”

Local media had reported that Smith, the general secretary of Panama’s Sitraibana banana workers’ union, was had been charged for crimes related to his involvement in the protests, including illicit association and disrupting public transit.

Smith told local media earlier this week the union was working with lawyers on various suits against Chiquita regarding payment irregularities and maternity leave.

“More than anything we urge Chiquita to resume its operations in Boca del Toro,” Gilberto Guerra, another union leader, told TV channel Telemetro. “If it does not, we insist it pay what is right as required by the law and the labor code.”

Chiquita did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Banana growers are a major employer and source of income in Panama, and Chiquita is among its top exporters. Formerly known as the United Fruit Company, Chiquita changed its name in 1990.

United Fruit had acquired vast influence in Latin America during the 20th century, when it became notorious for political interventions and labor exploitation, as well as the Colombian army’s 1928 massacre of hundreds of striking workers.

Last year, a U.S. jury ordered Chiquita pay families some $38 million after it found it liable for damages over 2001-2004 protection payments to a Colombian paramilitary organization accused of killing its plantation workers.

(Reporting by Elida Moreno and Sarah Morland; Editing by Kylie Madry and Diane Craft)