The IUF's International Banana Union Alliance launched
IUF affiliates represent banana workers in Latin America, Europe, the Caribbean, Asia and Africa. In response to the challenges facing our affiliates in all those regions the IUF has established The International Banana Union Alliance (IBUA) .
The Alliance will exist as part of the IUF's Agricultural Workers Trade Group established in 1994 when the IUF became an organization representing agricultural workers worldwide.
The IUF's Latin American Department for Banana Workers was established at the most recent meeting of the Latin American Regional Committee which met in Buenos Aires March 17-19, 2005. The IUF will be setting up similar networks in other regions where they would bring strength to banana workers' unions.
The Alliance will initially function through a network web site set up by the IUF at:
http://www.iuf.org/bananas/
The web site will allow multi-language contributions from banana unions and will be a source of information about the sector from the IUF and other organizations with whom the IUF workers closely in the banana sector.
An international meeting of unions in the banana sector will be held in 2006 and a further discussion amongst interested unions will take place at the International Banana Workers Conference which takes place in Brussels April 28-30, 2005 (see the details of the conference on the network site:
http://www.iuf.org/bananas/).