BY URSULA MILLER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Despite the devastation of Chiquita Brands International's banana crop in Honduras, the Cincinnati-based fruit company said it will keep doing business in the storm-ravaged Central American country.
Chiquita President Steven Warshaw, who was in Honduras this week reviewing the damage, said he spent part of his time reassuring banana workers of his company's commitment.
"I didn't come down here to run away," he said he told reporters and workers earlier this week at a news conference in El Progreso, a city just southeast of where Chiquita's Honduran operations are based.
Crop rehabilitation in Honduras, where bananas have been commercially grown for about a hundred years, will take more than a year and cost millions. Regular banana production won't resume there until early 2000.
In spite of the bleak situation, business prospects in Honduras remain good, Mr. Warshaw told reporters outside Chiquita headquarters Thursday.
Honduras provides Chiquita with an estimated 12 percent to 15 percent of its total banana production. It is the company's third-largest provider after Panama and Costa Rica.
The company also has other non-banana operations in Honduras that employ about 3,000. There are "varying degrees of damage" to Chiquita's edible oils and processed fruit-ingredient plants in Honduras, Mr. Warshaw said. Those businesses will keep operating for the most part.
Chiquita's 7,000 or so banana-plantation workers aren't so fortunate. The company plans to lay off many of them until banana production resumes but will pay them an average of 70 percent of their cash wages for at least three months. Chiquita plans to continue providing food, shelter, medical supplies and schooling for the same amount of time or longer.
The company continues to negotiate an extended relief package with the union, Mr. Warshaw said.
