The most popular fruit in New Zealand comes from corporate plantations where workers are subjected to slave-like conditions. And we’re demanding that New Zealand’s largest supermarket chain do something about it.

71% of the bananas sold in New Zealand come from the Mindanao region in the Philippines -- where workers labour up to 18 hours a day for pennies and risk imprisonment or death if they push for humane treatment.

Bananas are big business. And Foodstuffs, New Zealand’s largest grocer that runs Four Square, New World and Pak'nSave, is happy to overlook where its bananas come from so long as it can get a piece of that profit.

That’s about to change. Tell Foodstuffs to clean up its banana supply chain and stop profiting off slave labour.

Workers in Mindanao are paid around NZ$6 per day, sometimes even less, about one-fifth of what is needed to meet the basic needs of a family of five. Many work in plantations owned by Dole, one of the largest banana corporations in the world. Last year, Dole alone grossed NZ$6.9 billion.

Many of these workers, while enduring slave-like conditions are also exposed to horrible chemicals banned in Europe and America. And anyone who has tried to stand up for the workers’ rights has faced brutal crackdowns. Grassroots groups have documented 318 extrajudicial assassinations of union members and activists since just 2010 -- with the real number likely much higher.

Foodstuffs can stop this injustice tomorrow if it chooses to clean up its supply chain. Let’s demand it does exactly that.

We’re coming off our biggest New Zealand win ever when 40,000 SumOfUs members stopped a secret water bottling company from sucking the Canterbury Plains dry. We can do it again.

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