Workers today in northern Costa Rica may make history with a first collective bargaining agreement on a pineapple farm.

Costa Rica’s Labor Ministry is alert to a strike that initiated today at 3:00 a.m. by workers at the Santa Fe pineapple plantation in the far northern town of Los Chiles, said Gerald Valverde Santos, spokesman for the Private Sector Workers Union (Sitrasep, its acronym in Spanish) this morning over the phone.

Last year, the workers, who had successfully reached agreements regarding wages, and other basic worker rights with their employer, Tropical Fruits, a subsidiary of Exportaciones Norteña, wound up striking on four occasions after these agreements were not upheld, said Valverde.

Because police were called in by the company during these strikes and acted forcefully against workers, the Vice-Minister of Labor Nancy Marín Espinoza was alerted by Sitrasep about today’s strike, and said she was informing local police to not interfere with the pacific and legal workers’ demonstration.

The peaceful strike is in anticipation of today’s date for the company and Sitrasep to meet to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement. The date was set after the union presented enough union affiliations in February to negotiate with the company, explained Valverde. Some 220 of the total 400 pineapple workers have affiliated with Sitrasep with the hopes of gaining workplace protections for minimum wages, contract renewals, improved working conditions and other labor rights.

According to Ricardo Solís, Secretary General of SITRASEP, “In the morning, the workers agreed to the bargaining agreement that we will present at the negotiations [at 11 a.m.]. The workers also said that this strike is in solidarity with the struggle for collective agreements in the public sector, with the understanding that these agreements are rights, not privileges.”

The union is also denouncing that on previous occasions, company contractors forced striking workers to sign letters of resignation, and are requesting these letters be annulled.

Meanwhile, in San José and other parts of the country, several social and political organizations are demonstrating in support of labor and union rights.

If Sitrasep and Tropical Fruits in Los Chiles fail to reach an agreement today, the process will move to the Labor Ministry’s office in San José where the ministry will provide assistance with reaching a collective bargaining agreement with the Santa Fe pineapple workers, said Valverde.

The agreement would break significant ground on increasing respect for agricultural worker rights, many of whom work in precarious and informal conditions in Costa Rica.