While pineapple growers downplay the social, and also environmental, issues behind the monoculture’s activity in Costa Rica, local communities continue to share firsthand experiences of human and labor rights violations.

“One of the most worrying complaints that is systematically repeated in the plantations visited in Limón province – in Guácimo, Siquirres, Pococí, and Talamanca – as well as those in Sarapiquí, San Carlos and Los Chiles, is related to the practice by pineapple, and also banana, companies to establish discriminatory or exclusionary lists (which could also be called “black lists”) of workers who have suffered occupational injuries or illnesses,” said Broad Front Party Legislator Patricia Mora after a recent field visit.

She said after her visit to several plantations in these regions she was able to affirm “that the companies that own these plantations violate the human and labor rights of their workers, for which we are asking the Ministry of Labor to investigate and immediately draft a report on the situation.”

In the letter she sent to Minister of Labor Alfredo Hasbum, she detailed the “serious complaints recounted by workers on pineapple and banana plantations” during her recent visit. Saying the experience gives “the impression that monoculture pineapple and banana plantations are not governed by Costa Rican laws, but rather are foreign enclaves within the country.”

Mora related practices that violate human rights because they invade and “violate the privacy of the medical records of working people, and constitute gross acts of discrimination based on health circumstances of workers … who are denied the right to work, even though they are able to work,” she said.

Mora called on her colleagues to strengthen funding for a project that would allow the Labor Inspection Unit of the Ministry of Labor to be able to throughly investgate such situations.

In her letter to the Labor Ministry, she requested a timely report that addresses: 1. Whether existing practices on these plantations regarding exclusion based on prior occupational injuries or illnesses, even if a person is fit for work, is a legal practice in Costa Rica, and 2. Whether job seekers can be required as part of the hiring process to provide a copy of their medical files from the National Insurance Institute for the purpose of verifying if in the past they have suffered occupational accidents or illnesses.

Finally, Mora asked the Labor Minister to detail existing policies to address the practices described in her appeal; “What actions is the Ministry of Labor developing or planning to develop to prevent, prevent, investigate and punish these discriminatory practices and human rights violations?”