NAME: ARSALAN BASHIR TEACHER INCHARGE: SIMTIHA MAAM

ROLL NO.: 46 SEMESTER: 3RD D

SUB: BUSINESS ETHICS

& CORPORATE GOVERNANCE

Q1)
In 1928, 25,000 banana workers from the United Fruit Company—an American
corporation operating as Chiquita today—decided to go on strike in Colombia. United Fruit
Company had become a local monopoly by developing strong ties to the Colombian and
American governments and building its own railway system to transport its bananas. The
banana workers’ demands included a 6-day work week, payment with money rather than
company coupons, compensation for work accidents, increase in wages for workers earning
less than 100 pesos per month, and a demand that is still echoed today by the hundreds of
thousands of gig-economy workers globally: to be recognized as employees.

Disturbed by the losses that the strike caused to its bottom line, United Fruit Company
decided to activate its power over the Colombian and U.S. governments. The workers were
immediately and unjustly portrayed as “communists” by the local newspapers. The U.S.
government threatened to invade, using the U.S. Marine Corps that were stationed off the
shores of Ciénaga, should the Colombian government not act to protect United Fruit’s
interests. Concerned with this threat and its potential economic impact, the Colombian
government decided to act in favor of the interests of the United Fruit Company.

On Dec. 6, 1928, Colombian soldiers sprayed gunfire at the banana workers who were
demonstrating outside of the United Fruit Company. The figures about the number of
workers killed greatly fluctuate depending on the source, however, about a month later, the
U.S. Ambassador to Bogotá, Jefferson Caffery, sent a dispatch home, informing Washington:
“I have the honor to report…that the total number of strikers killed by the Colombian
military exceeded one thousand.”

This bloody piece of history seems hard to believe today, but the pursuit of
monopolistic businesses by massive global corporations is alive and well today. With five
major corporations—Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook—now controlling all
facets of our lives, we should be alarmed and doing everything possible to resist this
orchestration. From the widespread, and now routine, surveillance of our lives, competition
for Pentagon contracts to Amazon worker cages, and the gig-economy imposed on
hundreds of thousands of workers, we are nearing an even more frightening chapter in this
global thirst for power and profits. It is now more crucial than ever to put our differences
aside and unite to protect our planet from this carefully executed scenario utilizing modern
monopolistic structures.

So, United fruit company is responsible for the massacre. If the company had
paid attention towards workers then the massacre wouldn’t have happened!
Q2)
The solution to avoiding events like the Banana Massacre is distributive justice, which
idealises the problems that any ordinary citizen faces. It seeks to establish a strong order of
justice in all of its types. In this situation, the poor workers were attempting to improve their
survival. The workers were only striking for basic rights that were all very reasonable.
Working in latin America heat was not an easy thing to do and they only wanted some kind
of reward. Their demand for minimum wage was simply a way of expressing their frustration
at not being able to feed their families while working hard. if the company had listened to the
employees about their working conditions and behaved accordingly, as they were only asking
for their convenience, not something massive that was impossible to achieve. When the
company refused to listen to the employees, forcing them to strike, which was their right, it
was the government's responsibility at that time. Instead of investigating and resolving the
issue, the government ordered its troops to open fire, killing 5000+ innocent people who
were simply exercising their right to protest. So, if both the company and the government had
behaved responsibly, the massacre could have been avoided.

Thanks for giving another chance!