100% of Fyffes Management Undertake Freedom of Association Training

Freedom of Association and Collective Bargaining was identified as a salient human rights risk for Fyffes when the company undertook its first ever Human Rights Risk Assessment in 2019 and 2020. One of the mitigation actions Fyffes identified was to ensure that 100% of its management undertook training on Freedom of Association to familiarise themselves with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Conventions, the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) Base Code and the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Fyffes second ongoing mitigation action was to continue to engage with trade unions and workers representatives in good faith.

Fyffes operates in many countries with varying degrees of unionisation and in countries with different labour laws concerning the rights of trade unions. The company has committed through the Fyffes Principles – our code of conduct – to respect the right of all workers to freedom of association and collective bargaining.

The training is publicly available Fyffes – YouTube and Banana Link, a labour rights non-governmental organisation, reviewed the content before we converted it into an online interactive training module.

Speaking about this milestone, Fyffes Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, Caoimhe Buckley said ‘I would like to thank Fyffes management for taking part in this training, completing the online and classroom modules and for their engagement with this subject. It is extremely important that we respect the free choice workers make about their union affiliation.’

Fyffes also provides a UNGP compliant grievance mechanism for any workers or community members who wish to make a complaint regarding freedom of association or any of the other expected behaviours as outlined in the Fyffes Principles. Our grievance mechanism is available at http://ethicshotline.fyffes.com