What Recourse for the Farmer?

The newest piece of controversy to raise its head in Fair Helen is the saga of the impending loss of jobs for the employees of the St. Lucia Banana Corporation (SLBC) as reported on the front page of this issue of The VOICE.
In short, the chairman of WIBDECO has announced that that company will no longer be buying bananas from the SLBC, because of their lack of certification … and this has resulted in SLBC having to inform its employees that they will have to find employment elsewhere, come April 1st of this year.
SLBC authorities are accusing WIBDECO’s CEO Bernard Cornibert, of having made the decision without consultation with his Board … and that there appears to be political implications behind the move.
Now the CSA and other trade union organizations are jumping into the fray and threatening all kinds of industrial action – even to the extreme of “shutting down the country” if the forty or so employees of the SLBC lose their jobs.
To add to the stew, the government is being implicated in the affair since, as one communiqué clearly states … a government-appointed member sits on the board of WIBDECO.
Sound familiar? An imbroglio comprising bananas, government, opposition union heads and the plight of apparently helpless employees whose livelihoods are once more threatened by the manipulations, intrigue and positioning for power by those who are managing the banana industry … or whatever is now left of it?

One thing however, sticks out like a sore thumb in the present situation: while there are unions who are ready to go as far as “shutting down the country” to protect the jobs of the forty employees of the SLBC, who stands for the farmers – not forty, but forty times forty and much more – who daily trudge out to their fields in order to tend their crops in the hot sun (or pouring rain, take your pick), so that there may be an industry to begin with.
One hears nothing about them, no arms being taken up in their defence, they who are the foundation stones of the agricultural sector of our economy.
It is to be hoped that there is no destructive finale coming out of the confrontational situation that has arisen and that political objectives – if indeed, as is alleged, there are any – are put aside for the good of the country; but it is a crying shame to see, once more, the upper-level players in the banana industry using it and the defenceless farmers as pawns in a power-struggle political game … while the whole country looks on.
Where does help come from for the farmers, in situations like these?
How do they protect their jobs?