…The Agroindustrial Workers’ Union (STAS) has been trying to organize seasonal melon workers and  improve labor conditions in Choluteca for more than four years. It accuses Fyffes…of systematically violating the workers’ freedom of association.

In early 2019, after an international pressure campaign…Fyffes seemed to relent, agreeing to talk with the union and reinstate some workers allegedly fired in retaliation. But since then, the union says Fyffes has backtracked, refused to recognize the union, and instead supported parallel company-backed unions...

On the melon plantations of the Choluteca region, Hondurans face another transnational struggle, as a militant farmworkers' union clashes with a major fruit multinational for the right to represent the workers who feed U.S. consumers.

“The formation of those organizations was part of a pattern of anti union violence against STAS,” says the union’s general secretary, Moises Sanchez, in a phone interview with The Progressive from Honduras, conducted via a translator. “And the reason that they recognized those unions was not because they are a good farm or a good multinational corporation. What we want are exclusive bargaining rights for the temporary workers on the farms who don’t have a voice or a vote to improve their working conditions.”

Throughout this period, Sanchez has faced repeated physical and legal attacks…