Toxic bananas: Chiquita’s plantation workers toil on a piecework basis for rock-bottom wages and suffer from pesticides

Zurich, Lausanne, April 21, 2026

As sweet as the yellow fruit is, so bitter are the conditions under which it is produced: research by Public Eye into Chiquita’s suppliers in Guatemala reveals such glaring abuses that the local “bananeros” can only get through their working day with a cocktail of medication. The Swiss corporation’s hides behind the Rainforest Alliance’s green label while simultaneously benefiting from tax dumping at its headquarters on Lake Geneva. To ensure Chiquita addresses these serious labor rights violations, Public Eye is calling for participation in a digital protest.
© Fabian Lang

In brief: 

  • The banana plantations of Chiquita’s suppliers in southern Guatemala are characterized by highly exploitative and hazardous working conditions. 

  • In the Swiss canton of Vaud, where the former US corporation is headquartered since 2008, Chiquita benefits from cantonal and national tax dumping. 

  • With a (for the time being) virtual protest, Public Eye is calling for the payment of legal minimum wage, protection from pesticide-spraying aircraft and guaranteed freedom of association. 

Partly due to its sordid colonial history as United Fruit Company, the originally US-based banana corporation likes to hide behind its world-famous Miss Chiquita logo. The reality on the plantations run by its suppliers in Guatemala, however, is brutal: our exclusive report details 12-hour shifts in sweltering heat and under immense time pressure. And all for a wage that falls below the (already low) legal minimum. Toxic is not only the working environment, but also the aerial spraying of pesticides, to which thousands of pickers are exposed without protection. The main active ingredient sprayed, mancozeb, has been banned in Europe and Switzerland for years because it is too dangerous. However, anyone who criticizes these exploitative working conditions or even gets organized in a trade union is risking dismissal and ending up on a blacklist that bars them from other jobs on banana plantations. 

Many workers can only cope with these precarious conditions by relying on a mix of energy drinks and the opioid Tramadol. Chiquita ignores the abuses and responds to resistance – as recently in Panama – with repression or relocation. This is also the case in Guatemala, where production has shifted from the company’s own plantations in the north to subcontracted farms in the south. But because Chiquita’s business model is not only based on dumping wages in the producing countries but also on tax dumping in the canton of Vaud, we have also investigated the “banana republic of Switzerland”. Since 2015, the notorious corporation has made profits of 1.6 billion US dollars and paid less than 7% tax on it. For the same reasons, Chiquita’s main competitors – Fyffes and Del Monte – are also based in Switzerland. 

Almost all of Chiquita’s production is certified by Rainforest Alliance. According to their standards, the grievances we documented on Guatemala’s plantations should not actually be happening there. For example, any use of the highly toxic pesticide mancozeb is explicitly banned by the label with the green frog. Yet Chiquita’s suppliers have had “temporary” exemptions for spraying it by aircraft for years. This greenwashing is another reason why Public Eye is organizing a virtual protest to remind Chiquita of its responsibility towards plantation workers in Guatemala. For them, we are demanding legal minimum wages, a ban on pesticide spraying during working hours, and freedom of association. Should Chiquita fail to respond to these requests, we will take our peaceful protest directly to the company’s headquarters in Switzerland. 

For more information contact: 

Oliver Classen, Media director, +41 44 277 79 06, oliver.classen@publiceye.ch

Robert Bachmann, Commodities expert, +41 44 277 79 22, robert.bachmann@publiceye.ch