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Issue That Never Was, and Never
Will Be
Jan 2012
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Kapatiran Issue
That Never Was, and Never Will Be, January 2012
INTERNET
STRIKES BACK AT NESTLÉ
Live Video Linkup To The Picket Line
- Rod Prosser
Michael Moerua, a process worker at the Cambria Park
Nestlé factory, Wiri (south Auckland) and Eliana
Darroch, activist from Auckland, sat in the comfort of
the Migrante Aotearoa office in Auckland on July 23, 2010
and chatted via live teleconference to a group of
striking workers camped in the heat and dust outside the
gates of the Nestlé factory in Cabuyao, just south of
Manila. The video conference was part of a new initiative
in solidarity education organised by Filipino filmmaker
Ron Papag and me, with the assistance of Wellington
Kiwi-Pinoy. It was the third such direct linkup with
workers overseas since 2006 which, in edited form, will
become part of an environmental education video package
for NZ schools. Papag visited this country in 2009 to
conduct workshops in grassroots media work.
The project called SECA – School for Environmental
and Cultural Action - involves teenage students from all
over the country learning in, about and for the
environment (including its cultural, social, political
and economic dimensions). Operating outside the walls of
the official education system, the School aims to inspire
its participants to be activists in their chosen fields
of study and work. The teleconferences represent the
solidarity component. Solidarity, even as a concept, is
almost completely missing from the curriculum of
conventional environmental education. The students
involved in SECA quickly discovered that they
couldn’t begin to understand some of the deeper
dimensions to the struggle for the environment without
being actively engaged with those most affected, in the
spirit of genuine international solidarity.
Darroch, one of the SECA students, put it this way:
“It’s inspiring to see people struggling so
hard considering what they are up against. The more I
find out what’s going on, the more outraged I am and
the more I feel that this needs to be presented more
widely”. The Nestlé workers have been on strike
(technically locked out) for eight years now, attempting
to get the management to implement a Supreme Court ruling
on a pension agreement. The company’s response has
been brutal. The union representing the picketers has
documented 23 strike-related deaths including the killing
of one of its top leaders, Ka Fort Fortuna, whose widow,
Luz Fortuna, spoke in the linkup. She was overjoyed at
the opportunity to talk directly to friendly faces
overseas. She said: “Knowing we have your support
helps us hugely in persevering and overcoming our
obstacles”.
She and Noel Alemania, the strikers’ chairman, not
only outlined human rights abuses in the course of the
dispute, but also how the biggest food corporation in the
world cynically exploits the natural environment. During
a severe seasonal flood in 2009 it was revealed that much
of the destruction in the region was caused by Nestlé
destroying forest cover to plant cacao. Whole communities
were washed away. And now the factory dumps toxic wastes
into surrounding waterways. The people of nearby towns
and villages have to rely on bottled water – sold to
them by Nestlé.
Genuine International Solidarity
At the end of the conference, Moerua, who is a union
delegate himself, was quite open about being shocked by
what he had learnt and by the experience of being face to
face with fellow employees he knew little about.
“I’m quite overwhelmed… to be honest I
believed the company for which I worked for so many years
would do the right thing, and then to hear people sharing
and making comment about the struggles they’ve been
through, it’s been a real eye-opener”. The two
NZ participants committed to keep up contact with Luz
Fortuna, Noel Alemania and their comrades in order to
help raise awareness and to participate in ongoing
campaigns such as the Boycott Nestlé Products campaign
run by the Auckland Philippines Solidarity Group (see
“There’s Blood In Your Coffee: Auckland Protest
In Solidarity With Striking Filipino Nestlé
Workers”, by Luke Coxon , Auckland Philippines
Solidarity, in Kapatiran 32, October 2009,
http://www.converge.org.nz/psna/Kapatiran/KapNo32/Kapart32/art151.htm
Ed.).
The Nestle picketers are also keen to contribute what
they can to their counterparts in this country –
through providing video documentation and other ways
which may help in exposing the company, advancing
workers’ rights and protecting the environment in
New Zealand . The SECA solidarity education package will
be finished early in 2011 and available from Wellington
Kiwi-Pinoy ( Box 3563 , Wellington ,
communitymedia@paradise.net.nz).
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