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Staying under the radar: constraints on labour agency of pineapple plantation workers in Costa Rica?

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Abstract

Plantation workers have seemingly little opportunities for labour agency, defined as the worker’s ability to act and improve their conditions. In response to a call for a better understanding of the horizontal dimension shaping labour agency, this article questions what local factors determine the worker’s ability to act by analysing the institutional constraints embedded in the national context through a mixed methods approach. A combination of qualitative and quantitative data is used to understand what shapes and constrains the potential for labour agency in the case of plantation workers in the pineapple sector of Costa Rica. We provide new empirical evidence of the relation between the local opportunity structure—proxied by perceived job security and union awareness—and labour agency in terms of a worker’s intention to choose forthright (voice), evasive (exit) or repressed (loyalty) actions. The model results indicate that a lack of job security and a lack of union awareness significantly reduce the likelihood to use forthright actions (such as voicing concerns, striking or joining a union) compared to evasive (such as leaving the job) or repressed actions (such as doing nothing). In addition, the qualitative analysis of the local opportunity structure identifies four institutional constraints: weak employment protection, vulnerability of migrant workers, limited workers’ representation and insufficient labour law enforcement. Besides overcoming these institutional constraints, empowering workers to make their voices heard also requires awareness raising about their collective bargaining rights and more job security.

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Notes

  1. In terms of export value it increased from US$ 58 million in 1995 to US$ 940,7 million in 2017. It became the second largest national export sector (9% of total exports) after bananas (10%) (PROCOMER 2018).

  2. According to the Labour Ministry, 28% of the agricultural workers in the Huetar Norte region are not covered by social security.

  3. We identified the following unions in the region: SITRASEP, SITAGAH and SINTRAPEM (COSIBA-CR), SITRAP, UNT, SINTRAPIFRUT (SINTRASTAFCOR).

  4. A SWOT-analysis examines the internal Strengths and Weaknesses and the external Opportunities and Threats to an organisation.

  5. The potential instrumental variables we tested include: share of permanent contracts in the region, worker received training, parents who also work in the pineapple sector, intention to move to another region for living in the future, and distance to the plantation. Yet, none of these passed the statistical rigour test.

  6. The unionisation rate largely differs between private and public sector (respectively less than 1% vs. 30% unionised workers) (OECD 2017).

  7. The percentage of unionised workers in the banana industry fell from 90 in 1982 to 5% in 1987.

  8. According to the Akaike information criterion (AIC) and Bayesian information criterion (BIC), MLM 1 is preferred because it has the lowest value compared with the other models. AIC and BIC are measures for comparing the quality of a model relative to other models. The model with the lowest score is preferred.

Abbreviations

AIC:

Akaike Information Criterion

BIC:

Bayesian Information Criterion

GPN:

Global Production Network

GVC:

Global Value Chain

IIA:

Irrelevant Independent Alternatives

ILO:

International Labour Organization

LR:

Likelihood Ratio

MLM:

Multinomial Logit Model

MPM:

Multinomial Probit Model

OECD:

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

CANAPEP:

National Chamber of Pineapple Producers and Exporters

SWOT:

Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Threats

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the constructive comments received on earlier versions of this paper from Katharina Krumbiegel and the participants of the IAAE Conference in Vancouver in 2018 and the EAAE PhD workshop in Barcelona in 2017. The feedback of the anonymous reviewers helped us to redesign the conceptual framework. We would also like to thank the enumerators and all respondents who took the time to participate in the study. The data collection would not have been possible without the logistical support of the Centro de Desarrollo Rural (CDR) and the partner universities in Costa Rica  to whom we owe a great debt of gratitude. The study was funded by a Special Research Fund (BOF) of Ghent University.

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  1. Department of Agricultural Economics, Ghent University, Coupure Links 653, 9000, Ghent, Belgium

    Annelien Gansemans & Marijke D’Haese

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  1. Annelien Gansemans
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Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 4, 5, 6 and 7.

Table 4 Means, standard deviations and correlation matrix of variables
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Table 5 Cross tabulation of perceived job security by contract type
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Table 6 Cross tabulation of perceived labour agency by perceived job security
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Table 7 Cross tabulation of perceived labour agency by union awareness
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Gansemans, A., D’Haese, M. Staying under the radar: constraints on labour agency of pineapple plantation workers in Costa Rica?. Agric Hum Values 37, 397–414 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-019-09998-z

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