REPRODUCED AT THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES DECLASSHED Authority Stateletter Fuhr 8: MLS C:te 24 981 informed the Department that the strike or banana workers was called off officially on August 28, 1934, and the following Saturday, for the first time in a month, there was happiness in the banana region because stemmere of the United Fruit Company took from the Costa Rican port of Limón more than 100, 000 stems of bananas. As Inforned the Department in that despatch, the strike settlement was unsatisfactory to the Communist lenders because the United Fruit Company, an Ameriona con porttion, which produces on its own fazma about 20 per cent of the Costa Rican banana exporta and buys the entir oupput of the Atlantio region, refused to recognise the terms of the settlement. The Fruit Company position then, as it is today, was that it would not recognize the Communists as spokesman for its laborers.
The Truit Company expressed a milingness to deal directly with its own employees, but it insisted on its rights to ignore the Communiste. Aside from reflecting the sentiments of big employers of labox in the United States who insist on bargaining with their employees through Company wnions instead of through national organizations 21ke the American Federation of Labor or its affiliates, the trut Company was fearful that if it recognised the Commnist Party in Costa Rica it would be, first, paving the way for similar labor negotiations with similar so called Communist organizations in Honduras, in Colombia, in Panamá and elsewhere throughout the Caribbean area where it has large activities; and second,