Who owns La Italia?  

Fairbank, Cooper & Lyle

The Ecuador farms are owned and operated by the Belize-based Teachers Group agribusiness, Fairbank, Cooper & Lyle Ltd (FCL web site).

This is a company formed by a merger of three Teachers Group offshore concerns, Fairbank Ltd, Cooper Investments and Lyle Enterprises - all of which were mentioned as key Teachers Group financial enterprises in the 2001 Danish police report.

Fairbank, Cooper & Lyle also owns U'Sagain, the apparently charitable US clothes trading company, a commercial Teachers Group used clothes enterprise.

Grupo Danés

According to a 1996 Danish newspaper report, the plantations in Ecuador were run by a Teachers Group enterprise known as Grupo Danés, based at Edif Finansur, piav 18, PO Box 15208, 9 De Octobre y Los Rios, Guyaquil.

The Henning Bjornlund story

The person generally credited with buying the fruit plantations in Central America is Henning Bjornlund (left), also known as Henry Henning, who was theTeachers Group 'chief accountant' in the 1980s.

Now living in Australia, Danish-born Bjornlund was the financial genius who controlled and developed Teachers Group finances between 1970-1989. According to insiders it was he who thought up the idea of making multi-million dollar landholding investments in Central America.

Bjornlund left the Teachers Group in 1989-90 with a large golden handshake, and is now Associate Research Professor at the the Centre for Regulation and Market Analysis at the University of South Australia, Adelaide, and Associate Professor at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada. His field is international water economics.

His curriculum vitae makes no mention of his years with the Teachers Group. Some fellow academics have raised concerns at his appintments.

Danish police have said they would like to talk to Bjornlund next time he is in Denmark.

  The TG Plantations in Ecuador 

Hacienda La Italia is a large banana plantation in Ecuador owned by Teachers Group. It is a commercial enterprise, not an aid project, and it has nothing to do with any volunteer humanitarian work or charity.

It is one of between 20 and 30 commercial plantations scattered across Central and South America and the Caribbean, owned by the Teachers Group, thought to have been bought with money derived from humanitarian work.

All the plantations are agribusiness, and some are alleged to be highly exploitative. Until recently, the Teachers Group owned several more in Ecuador, but has since sold them.

Hacienda La Italia

The main plantation which we believe the TG owns today is Hacienda La Italia. This was acquired by the TG around 1988. According to a 2004 Danish trade union report, it employs about 120 workers, producing bananas for the US company Dole.

Conditions on the plantation are said to be grim and in 2001-2002 there were protests and strikes, met by the Teachers Group by lay-offs and sackings.

After a visit in 2004, one Danish trade union leader described the operation as 'capitalism at its worst' and said it shamed Denmark and Tvind.

Rio Culebra and Santa Rita

In 1996, a Danish newspaper reported that the Teachers Group owned eight farms in Ecuador, employing 2,000 workers. (Tvind Shops for New Plantations, Ekstra Bladet). We know of three.

The Ecuador plantations, according to this report, were part of what was described as a Teachers Group 'secret Latin American commerical empire', Grupo Danés, run by 56 office workers from an administrative building in the Ecuadoran city of Guayqil.

The Teachers Group also owns plantations in Belize, Brazil, Venezuela, and El Salvador, so it is possible that some of the other farms might have been elsewhere in central America, but run from Guayquil.

The other banana plantations we are certain of are Hacienda Rio Culebra (700 hectares) and Hacienda Santa Rita. Workers at Rio Culebra also went on strike in 2001-2, but were sacked wthout compensation by the Teachers Group managers.

The Teachers Group operating companies we know about in Ecuador are Frioport SA, which owns Hacienda La Italia, Ecpomartes SA, which owned Hacienda Rio Culebra (sold 2002-3), and Jokay SA.

In 2002-3, Hacienda Rio Culebra and Hacienda Santa Rita were sold and as far as we know they are no longer in Teachers Group ownership.

  Who's Who in Ecuador  

Søren Sørensen: A senior manager of Teachers Group landholdings in Central and South America. A graduate of the Teachers Group, he is now manager at Fazenda Jatoba in Brazil as well as a board member of TG Pacifico in Mexico. In 2002, at the time of the La Italia strike, he was manager of the Teachers Group banana plantations in Belize, and took a management role in Ecuador when Rio Culebra workers went on strike in 2001-2.

Ole Toft Andersen: Tvind-educated Teachers group manager at the Hacienda La Italia, and boss of the Teachers Group controlled operating company, Frioport SA, in 2001.

Bjarne Hjorth: Teachers Group plantation manager - formerly, the manager of the Rio Culebra plantation, when there were strikes there in 2001. Manager of the La Italia plantation since 2002.

Ecuador:  Tvind "steals from poor banana workers"

by a Tvind Alert correspondent - 14th December 2004

Look at this old man. He is 80 years old. His name is Terán Leon Hector Simon.  He is a poor man, and always has been.   But as a banana plantation worker he can make a living.   He gets 32 dollars and 68 cents every week.  He has worked hard all his life.  Now at 80 years old he would like to retire.    But he can't.    Then he would not have any income. His employer has kept the money.    It should have been transferred to the social- and health-insurance, instead the money has been withheld.

His employer is the Teachers Group-Tvind owned banana plantation La Italia in Ecuador.

This is the weekly payment to Terán (right) - click to enlarge..  The employer takes something to transfer to the social and health insurance and fees for the trade union. But the employer keeps the money.

In 2003 the Ecuadoran trade union supported by the Danish trade union "Specialarbejderforbundet" (SID - similar to the UK's Transport and General Workers Union) had a long battle with the TG-owned banana plantations in Ecuador.    It ended up with a collective deal about wages and working conditions.

In the meantime TG has sold most of its banana plantations in Ecuador. It only has the plantation La Italia left.

A trade union delegation from Denmark has just returned from Ecuador.   They found out, that TG has not done what they promised a year ago. The TG-leader of La Italia, Bjarne Hjorth, is accused by the trade union of breaking both the agreement and the Ecuadorian laws.

Danish trade union-leader Stanley Bach Mortensen with the banana workers shop steward Javier Vera (left) and  the president of the banana workers trade union Guillermo Touma.

The workers told the delegation that conditions on the plantation were OK until two years ago.   Then a new TG-leader came to the plantation, Bjarne Hjorth.   Earlier he was the leader of a now sold plantation, Rio Culebra.    In his time as a leader there similar problems occurred.    And in 2003 he sacked 100 workers who were active in the trade union.

The employers lack of payment to the social- and health insurance - half of it is taken from the workers salary' before the get paid - meant that 15 sick workers could not get treatment at the time of the visit from the Danish trade union delegation.

The trade union has during the last two years negotiated five times with Bjarne Hjort.   Every time they thought they had an agreement. But every time Bjarne Hjorth has broken the deal.

There are around 70 full-time workers and around 50 daily hired workers at La Italia.    The bananas are sold to Dole.

"The conditions on La Italia are capitalism at its worst.   It puts shame on Denmark and especially on Tvind", Danish trade union leader Stanley Bach Mortensen told a Danish newspaper after returning from Ecuador.

Armed guards make sure no one enters the TG-owned plantation La Italia.

Pictures: click to enlarge.

The story of the Ecuadorean workers' strikes

July 2001:   For some weeks banana workers at the Teachers Group-owned plantation Hacienda La Italia have been on strike, because the company has thrown out their shop steward, Fidel Alvarado.  He is the Secretario General del Comité de Empresa. At Hacienda Rio Culebra, another Teachers Group plantation, workers are also on strike in sympathy. The workers eventiually return.

Ecuador banana workers' trade unions are understood to have have formally complained to the Ecuador government about the working conditions and anti-trade union attitude at the plantations owned by the Danes.

August 2002: Workers at Rio Culebra have walked out again. Since early summer, 230 staff at Rio Culebra have been on strike, this time in protest at not being paid, and at the failure of the Teachers Group to pay their health insurance, contrary to Ecuadoran law.

The Danish trade union, SID (General Workers Union) supports the banana workers and their union, FENACLE, and seeks a meeting with the Teachers group boss, Søren Sørensen (manager of all the TG banana plantations in Belize). Sorensen promises to improve the conditions for the Rio Culebra plantation workers.

But, none of Sørensen's promises are met. According to SID, the banana the workers get their salaries in the form of 'rubber cheques' - that bounce. And the manager,  Danish TG-member Bjarne Hjorth, still has not paid the health insurance. (SID discovers this when a plantation worker is bitten by a snake - he is refused hospital treatment because his insurance has not been paid.)

September 2002: The Rio Culebra strike is over - the workers have been sacked. The 230 staff try to return to work, but are met by armed guards at the plantation gates. Many of the workers live on the plantation, so as well as no jobs, they have no homes.

December 2002: After the strike, 90 workers still do not have a job.  The 90 workers and their families are now totally without any income. Tvind has offered them a small compensation - a few hundred dollars. The workers have refused. According to the law the compensation offered is too small. For instance the shop steward Limber Alvarez, who has been working on the plantation for 14 years, should have had 7.500 dollars in compensation - he was only offered 200 dollars.

The plantation has still not paid the workers' social security - a total amount of 140,000 dollars.

The plantations are up for sale - half of the 700 hectares of Rio Culebra are being sold and according to local sources tthe Teachers Group is in the process of selling the rest. Another Teachers Group plantation in Ecuador, Santa Rita, has been sold recently. Seventy workers there were sacked - without any compensation.

March 2003: Amdi Petersen and the other members of Tvind's management could be taken to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.  CEOST, the federation of free trade unions in Ecuador, wants to bring a case against the Tvind management because of infringements of trade union leaders rights at a banana plantation in Ecuador.

The Ecuadorean trade union members are in Denmark at the opening of Amdi Petersen's trial for fraud and embezzlement, to attract attention to an amount of $600.000 which Tvind allegedly owes to 100 plantation workers who were fired last year after a strike.

After having tried to get the alleged Tvind-leader Amdi Petersen to talk in front of the court building in Århus, the Ecuadorans appeared later in front of Tvind's headquarters in Grindsted, backed by 15 to 20 persons from the Danish trade union SID.

The Teachers Group is leaving Ecuador. A local workers union representative says Tvind has sold the Hacienda Rio Culebra to a local sugar farmer.  The Santa Rita plantation was sold October last year and the third Tvind farm, La Italia, is also up for sale.