Yet as the fair trade world has discussed this question, certification has grown into something far more than a market niche.

In a new paper, we look at the current state of ethical certification, especially labels making fair trade claims. This paper looks at the latest research on the impacts of ethical certification, as well as changes in the food system over the past decades, including increasing corporate consolidation, and the impacts that has had on attempts at market-driven change.

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Ethical Certifications: Growing in Scope

Fair trade, and ethical certifications more broadly, have become enshrined in companies’ Corporate Social Responsibility Programs. Certifications have become a de facto benchmark for what’s fair, for pricing, baseline working conditions, and more. Certifications are used to guide billions in public procurement, and are being pointed to as possible partners for corporations in adhering to the European Union’s forthcoming mandatory due diligence legislation. From food safety to forced labor, certifications are promoted as a solution. Most recently, as Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) ratings grow as a hot trend in finance with over $35 trillion in global assets invested in funds that make claims around vetting companies on ESG principles, certifiers are promoting themselves as a solution there as well.

While many of us working for justice struggle to make legislative progress due to corporate capture of elected officials, certifications offer themselves as a solution to regulatory gaps and government failure to enforce basic rights. Yet these certifications, with rules written by corporate-friendly multi-stakeholder processes, offer an even more corporate-friendly form of soft law.

Thus, the broader movements for food justice, human and labor rights would do well to pay attention to ethical certifications – they’re definitely not just about choosing a chocolate bar these days.

We Urgently Need Real Corporate Accountability

As multinational corporations have adopted fair trade and other certifications to fulfill compliance requirements within their supply chains, the rules-based language of compliance has overtaken the initial purpose of the movement. At this point, fair trade labeling focuses more on prohibitions for those with least power in supply chains vs challenging the power of the biggest brands. There needs to be a reckoning with the scope of multinational corporations and their disproportionate market leverage to couple that with responsibility–and levers of power that are suited to holding them to account for the consequences of the decades, and centuries, of extractive purchasing practices that have left communities in poverty.

What comes next?

Fair trade certification reveals the complications and inherent flaws of looking to a market-based, voluntary system to address the fundamental injustices of our food and trade systems that are built on 500 years of colonization and extractive capitalism. Without a deliberate effort to recognize the power dynamics inherent in these relationships, too often certification has helped replicate, and even reinforce, the dynamics between worker and boss, and between the so-called Global South (producers) and Global North (purchasers).

The mechanics of exploitation rely on defining some people as expendable, putting their human rights and their humanity, below the goals of protecting profits and maintaining business as usual. Oppression based on race, gender, caste, national origin, and immigration status, to name just a few factors, helps to define these categories of marginalization. Adding more rules alone does not change the fundamental power dynamics.

Our new paper focuses on the flaws of certification, the critical weaknesses where well-intentioned programs are falling short, and even causing harm. Fundamental transformations are urgently needed to change our food, farming, trade, and economic systems to put food justice, racial justice, and climate justice at the center.

Transformation is urgently needed. Our new paper includes some suggestions for reforms that could help shift the balance of power within supply chains, using the levers of purchasing and certification systems as they currently exist.

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The post Looking Back, Looking Forward: Fair Trade Certification in 2022 appeared first on Fair World Project.

Child Labor in 2022 – a grim reality

Last year was declared the International Year for the Elimination of Child Labor. But instead of progress towards that goal, the statistics are headed in the wrong direction. In 2020, the number of children in child labor rose to 160 million around the world. That’s the first increase in 20 years, and is based on research done before the beginning of the pandemic.

Child labor is concentrated in the food and farming sector, with approximately 70% of child labor occurring on farms and plantations. That’s an estimated 108 million children on the front lines of the harms of the industrial food system. We know that toxic chemicals and hazardous pesticides are increasing pollution and decreasing biodiversity. They’re also bad for workers, and especially young people, who may experience not just immediate illness but also long-term, chronic effects on their developing minds and bodies.

This injustice is further compounded by the injustices of our global food system. As a declaration from a recent gathering of human rights leaders notes, “To this day, children working in agriculture continue to be exposed to hazardous pesticides that are banned in the country of export, resulting in abhorrent double standards and discrimination.”

Billionaires are Getting Richer

Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, experts have warned that the global crisis could drive child labor. Factory shut-downs, school closures, illness and death all push more children and young people to work to support themselves and their families.

And with two plus years of perspective, there’s another troubling trend: massive growing inequality, both between people and between nations. As the Oxfam paper “Profiting from Pain” notes, “Before the pandemic, inequality between rich countries and lower-income countries was falling and had been for three decades. COVID-19 has reversed this trend. Low- and middle-income countries now face a lost decade while rich nations once again pull ahead.”

Around the globe, the pandemic has hit hardest those already impacted by the historical legacies of colonialism and slavery. And those existing inequities are being exacerbated by policy decisions in response to the pandemic. There’s a massive transfer of wealth going on, and it’s impacting people both at the geopolitical level and at the personal level.

Our Food System Prioritizes Profits over Feeding People

Just as child labor is concentrated in the food system, so too is this growing inequality. Billionaires making money off food and agribusiness have seen their collective wealth soar 45% in the past two years, an increase of $382 billion.

Global food giant Cargill is an excellent example. Cargill is one of four companies who control over 70% of the global market for agricultural commodities, including wheat, soy, and cocoa. Rising market prices and speculation, fueled in part by the invasion of Ukraine as well as the pandemic, have meant record profits for the Cargill family heirs who own the company. Their combined wealth has risen 65% since 2020, growing by almost $20 million per day to a whopping $42.9 billion.

While the Cargill family has gotten rich, the rest of the world has not been so fortunate. Global food prices have soared 33.6% in the past year and continue to rise. Oxfam estimates that 263 million people could be pushed into extreme poverty this year because of these intersecting crises. This shock impacts those who can least afford it. People in low-income countries spend more than twice as much of their income on food as do those in richer countries. And poor people everywhere spend a higher percentage of their income on food than richer people do.

Once again, it’s painfully clear that the industrial food system is built to funnel profits up to just a few billionaires instead of prioritizing feeding hungry families.

Extractive Business is a Root Cause of Child Labor

One of the crops where the Cargill heirs have made their billions trading is cocoa. Meanwhile, West African cocoa farming families earn, on average, less than $1 per day. The gap is tremendous. And the extreme unfairness isn’t just a coincidence. The profits of these billionaires are built on the backs of poor farmers and workers.

Fueled by the extreme poverty, child labor on cocoa farms is on the rise. Cargill has known about the issue for decades. It’s been over two decades since they were one of the big cocoa traders to pledge to take action. They’ve been the subject of multiple lawsuits over their use of child labor (for more, listen to Episodes 6 and 7 of our For a Better World podcast where we break down the issues of money and power at play in the issue of child labor in cocoa with some of the people working to hold corporations accountable).

Despite sustained attention, Cargill continues to drag their feet on taking real action to address child labor (Cargill is not alone in this, the big chocolate companies are also failing to act on child labor). Instead of committing to paying true living incomes to cocoa farmers, Cargill continues to make them subsidize their profits through low prices. Further, Cargill lags behind the industry on some of the basics. Just 30% of their cocoa is traceable to the farmer cooperative it came from, per the Cocoa Barometer – a failure to take the fundamental first steps required for addressing supply chain issues.

Progress towards Ending Child Labor is Hampered by False Solutions.

It’s been over 20 years since big chocolate companies signed the Harkin-Engel protocol committing to ending child labor, and all the deadlines they set themselves have long passed.

Yet the issue is much bigger than cocoa. Across our food and farming system, working people and their children continue to be exploited. And the powerful interests that protect industry profit block progress on protections. A bill to close loopholes that allow children as young as nine to work nearly unlimited hours on U.S. farms has been re-introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives without action since 2001. That’s just one example of the ways that real action is bypassed in favor of weaker voluntary solutions.

Instead, corporations continue to back voluntary initiatives that just serve to gloss over the exploitation that’s baked into their business model. There is a recurring theme from the empty promises of Nestle’s Responsible Sourcing Standards to the recent B Corp Certification of Nestle’s Nespresso (despite child labor and human rights issues). In each case, there’s a rush to put a positive spin on a business model that fails to address the root causes of child labor instead of committing to the fair livelihoods and dignified work for all people, regardless of age.

To End Child Labor We Need to Strengthen Community-Led Solutions

Child labor is a symptom of the fundamental problem: Our food and farming systems, and our global economy as a whole, is fundamentally extractive. A few billionaires reap outsized profits from the exploited labor of people worldwide.

Last month, leaders from around the globe convened in Durban, South Africa, in a conference where they agreed to 49 key measures to address child labor. Running through the call to action is a strong thread: to address child labor, we need to strengthen communities to advocate for their own well-being and push back on extractive, exploitative systems.

Some of those measures include:

• Support for fundamental rights at work for all people of all ages, and ensuring that those rights are made real for those most likely to be excluded, including migrant workers, people discriminated against on the basis of race, caste, gender, etc.
• Real living incomes that allow families to thrive.
• Protections for the right to organize and collectively bargain as a bedrock for the guarantee of all other rights.
• Elimination of piece-rate pay for workers, that is, payment per bucket picked instead of per hour worked.
• Strengthening of cooperatives to build strong institutions for rural farmers and their families.
• Addressing the ways that child labor intersects with the key issues and inequities of our global economy, including addressing the climate crisis, universal social protections and public education, war and imperialism, migration, and gender equality, to name a few.

In short, to end child labor means making a real commitment to end the exploitative conditions and inequities that give rise to the conditions where child labor happens. Child labor is most common in the places where adult workers have the fewest legal protections – basic rights for all working people protect children.

Our global industrial food system is designed to extract profits from communities around the globe to enrich just a few billionaires at the top. There’s no single silver-bullet solution to address the consequences of that exploitative system on families, children, or our planet. But one of the key threads throughout is the need to support community-led initiatives as they build power and push back. Whether that’s strong cooperatives for rural farmers, or farmworker organizing, these efforts are some of the strongest tools to protect the rights of the most vulnerable – and build a society where all of us can thrive.

The post Child labor is on the rise. So are billionaires in the food system. appeared first on Fair World Project.

This is not the first time that B Corp has been criticized for the gap between their marketing claims and the reality of their standards. But the moment offers an opportunity to evaluate what those standards are, and if they are a meaningful tool for addressing the exploitative norms under which businesses currently operate.

Nespresso Single-Use Coffee: Hardly a “Force for Good”

Nespresso is Nestlé’s single-serve coffee line, providing coffee capsules with high-end branding to coffee drinkers at home as well as in offices and hotels. Single-serve coffee as a product seems incompatible with a vision for business that’s good for people and the planet, as B Corp certification promotes, given the huge amount of waste created.

Nespresso’s actions over the years are a prime example of greenwashing. Instead of grappling with the actual sustainability of their single-serve product and business model, they have attempted to make the case that their capsules are more environmentally friendly. The plastic pods used by companies such as Keurig for their single-serve coffees have a dismal environmental profile, generating enough waste, by some accounts to circle the globe 14 times. But it’s hard to make a leap from there to being actively good for the planet just by substituting aluminium for plastic waste.

In their marketing, Nespresso has chosen to emphasize people’s personal responsibility for recycling their packaging, despite the fact that their capsules aren’t accepted by standard household recycling programs. Per Nespresso’s calculation, just 28% of Nespresso pods are currently recycled, with the rest ending up in landfills around the globe (others have questioned this number, calculating the likely recycling rate closer to 5%). An article in the Guardian newspaper calculated the impact this way:

Waste disposal is not the only issue with single-use aluminium pods. Mining aluminium is a resource-intensive process with toxic by-products. In 2018, among plenty of fanfare, Nespresso partnered with Rio Tinto to launch Aluminium Stewardship Initiative ASI-Certified “sustainable aluminum” for their pods. Rio Tinto is a mining giant dubbed “a poster child for corporate malfeasance” for their lengthy rap sheet of environmental, labor and human rights violations as well as corruption and bribery. Despite the big announcement, buried in recent sustainability reporting, Nespresso has admitted that they did not achieve their target to source 100% ASI-Certified aluminum by the end of 2020. That’s yet another play from the corporate greenwashing playbook: Make a big announcement, then quietly fail to meet it.

Nespresso’s Record of Human Rights Violations

Nespresso’s parent company Nestlé has a long record of human rights violations, from their notorious formula debacles that have stretched over half a century to child labor, deforestation, land grabs, and more (for more on Nestlé’s business practices, listen to Season 1 of For a Better World podcast). Much reporting does not distinguish between Nespresso and Nestlé for sourcing data.

However, in just the last two years, since Nespresso began their path to B Corp Certification, there have been multiple investigations finding human rights violations in Nespresso’s supply chains. In 2020, investigative reporters found children as young as 8 picking coffee on seven Guatemalan farms selling to Nespresso. Then in 2021, Brazilian labor inspectors found multiple instances of wage theft on plantations selling to Nespresso, part of a pattern of violations and human rights abuses on certified farms.

Nespresso is part of the growing group of corporations developing their own Voluntary Sustainability Standards for themselves to meet, instead of opting to meet existing independent standards. Their Nespresso AAA Sustainable Qualitywas developed with Rainforest Alliance, a certifier who has repeatedly been critiqued for low standards and for how they have backed multinationals in covering up abuses in their supply chains. Nespresso’s AAA program does not have publicly available standards available for analysis to define how they reach their three pillars, Quality, Productivity, and Environmental and Social Sustainability.

Their most recent sustainability reporting notes that “More than 93% of Nespresso permanent coffee is now sourced sustainably through its AAA Sustainable Quality Program, up from 84% in 2014, including 48% certified coffee, up by 9 points since 2014.” It is not clear from Nespresso’s reporting what portion of their coffee is part of that “permanent” lineup that meets their sustainability standards and which percentage is purchased on spot markets (for context, it is not uncommon in cocoa sourcing to see brands speaking of their child labor pledges for their “direct” supply chains, while omitting the crucial fact that these supply chains only account for a fraction of their sourcing). All in all, Nespresso has previously been noted for their lack of transparency in their operations, described by coffee industry expert James Hoffman as “a black box of a company.”

And this is the business model that is now B Corp certified as “a force for good.”

B-Corp Certified Falls Short of its Claims

The non-profit organization B-Lab established B-Corp certification to distinguish businesses using “business as a force for good.” They claim that “Certified B Corporations are leaders in the global movement for an inclusive, equitable, and regenerative economy. Unlike other certifications for businesses, B Lab is unique in our ability to measure a company’s entire social and environmental impact.”

Yet despite B Lab’s claim that their certification is “transforming the global economy to benefit all people, communities, and the planet,” their standards fall far short of that sort of transformational change. They also fall short of the basic principles laid out in the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) , which spell out businesses’ fundamental responsibilities to prevent, address, and remedy human rights violations in their operations.

This is not a new critique. Indeed, advocates for business human rights have spent years underscoring the inadequacy of B Corp certification to address fundamental human rights. In the next section, this article will examine those standards and what that looks like in the context of Nespresso.

How B-Corp Standards Work

B-Corp certification scores companies based on a lengthy two-part self-assessment. The first part has a questionnaire evaluating companies on the following topics, each category worth approximately 40 points, with a total of 80 out of 200 required for certification.

• Governance – includes governance structure, mission, corporate accountability, and transparency.
• Workers – includes compensation and benefits, training and employee development, health and safety, job flexibility. There are questions on worker ownership, but no points given for union representation or freedom of association.
• Community – covers a vast range of topics including job creation, diversity and inclusion, workforce development, employee volunteerism, local involvement and sourcing, suppliers and product sourcing, supply chain poverty alleviation (including fair trade certifications), and charitable giving.
• Environment – encompasses overall environmental stewardship, including facilities, emissions, and supply chain and distribution where relevant.
• Customers – evaluates companies whose products are designed to address a particular social problem, such as health or educational services.

The second part of the assessment is an unscored list of “Disclosures”, which arguably focus on the most important issues from a human rights perspective. The Yes/No questions in this section range from whether the company supports workers’ rights to organize and collectively bargain, uses child labor, violates Indigenous peoples’ rights, as well as land and environment based issues. There is also a section for disclosures on suppliers, featuring just four short questions, asking whether the multinational has suppliers who use child labor, prison labor, or forced labor; operate in conflict zones; have practices that have substantial negative impacts on human rights, labor conditions, or local communities; or negative environmental impacts. Surprisingly, given recent exposes on child labor, workers’ rights, and supplier Rio Tinto’s abysmal environmental record, Nespresso checks “no” on all points except the conflict zones topic.

As part of attaining B Corp certification, companies are required “Make a legal commitment by changing their corporate governance structure to be accountable to all stakeholders, not just shareholders, and achieve benefit corporation status if available in their jurisdiction.” This legal commitment is promising–indeed, such a reconfiguration is essential to breaking free of the profit-driven, extractive capitalism that is harming people and the planet we inhabit. Yet so far, this aspiration has not held up to the realities of shareholder capitalism. Despite B Corp’s much touted “mission lock^[1],” the CEO of B Corp Danone was forced out for focusing too much on sustainability and not enough on shareholder dividends.

Lastly, large multinationals such as Nespresso and those that are subsidiaries of other corporations have additional screening and transparency requirements. Setting a higher bar for bigger companies who have greater capacity to do harm is a good step. However, the process also underscores a fundamental issue with B Corp certification. The emphasis is on transparency. Yet,, as the Nespresso disclosures reveal, a company can deny recent violations, or mention them in the “Transparent Disclosures” document and still be certified.

Perhaps anticipating backlash, the B Corp blog post announcing Nespresso’s certification emphasizes continual improvement and evolution, both of certified companies and of standards themselves. Yet despite this aspirational theme, continued progress is not mandatory for certification and some companies’ scores have decreased over time without apparent consequences.

Human Rights Can’t Be an Afterthought

While an in-depth analysis of B Corp’s standards are beyond the scope of this piece, there is a disturbing thread that runs throughout. B Corp’s model fails to meaningfully center human rights, both in the framing of their questions and in the ways in which scores are weighted throughout the assessment questionnaire.

An incisive article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review observes that,

Further, the weighting of the scores tends to prioritize the nice-to-have elements of a good work environment without putting emphasis on the fundamental human rights that should be protected for all working people.

An employee handbook is as close as many workers in the U.S. come to having a contract that spells out their working conditions. Yet this question is only worth 0.28 points. B Corp standards allow Nespresso to get full points for this category without critical provisions such as grievance processes or statements regarding the fundamental, internationally recognized right to bargain collectively and freedom of association.

By comparison, employee health and wellness initiatives are worth 0.95 points–weighting health assessments, programs to get people counting their steps, and other nice-to-have perks above fundamental rights.

The distribution of points is even more concerning when one looks across categories. As the screenshot from Nespresso’s Assessment shows, verifying that their supply chain is in compliance with local law, international human rights and environmental standards, is not a priority. And it does not need to be. These critical supply chain accountability measures count for less than employee wellness programs.

Other assessment questions assign just 0.21 points to having a supply chain code of conduct for suppliers and 0.35 points for having a stakeholder grievance process – other fundamentals that are once again acutely undervalued.

B Corp Certified: Accountability or Greenwashing?

After the Nespresso announcement, a small coffee company expressed concern on Twitter about what it meant to have a multinational with Nespresso’s social and environmental profile B Corp certified. B Corp responded, “Becoming a B Corp means Nespresso now has both a verified framework & an influential community holding them accountable to continue to improve their social and environmental performance & be transparent about progress. Find out more about efforts so far: https://bit.ly/3ELLJjm.” Yet both this accountability and progress are to be questioned. As the previous section made clear, B Corp’s standards do not adequately reflect the sort of human rights focused criteria that would mean true improvement in what’s being referred to as “social performance” here. Instead, it’s far more likely that B Corp would help them fairwash and greenwash their business model–there is no minimum requirement for scores per category nor mandatory areas for high scores. A company could improve scores and ostensibly make progress without addressing core human rights issues – or supply chain abuses.

Further, there is no requirement that companies improve progress over time. For example, grocery store New Seasons Market’s score has declined 33% over the time they have been a B Corp. The company’s union-busting made headlines in 2018 and garnered five complaints to the National Labor Relations Board. Yet the B Corp response to activity which is in contradiction to labor law, as well as international labor standards is to have the company state their own case in a disclosure buried deep in their assessment profile. There is transparency on paper, but no requirement to address or remediate the harms caused.

In the last year, several other high profile cases have seen certified B Corps acting at odds with the commitment to put people and the planet ahead of profit. And it seemed that the “influential community” was strikingly silent, despite concerns and complaints of workers, farmers, and advocates for fair food. In 2021, certified B Corp Danone announced that they were dropping the contracts of 89 organic farmers in New England, citing the inefficiencies of incorporating these small farmers into an increasingly consolidated supply chain. Advocates raised complaints with B Corp, who responded with a statement making clear that consideration for the livelihoods of these farmers was a matter of “supply chain selection” that B Corp did not intervene in. It is a decision that is very much in line with the last 50 years of U.S. agriculture policy that has pushed farmers to “get big or get out,” putting profit and efficiency first–and a decision that hardly seems in line with the rhetoric of transformation that B Corp puts forth.

In 2022, certified B Corp Amy’s Kitchen came under fire with a boycott led by food advocacy organizations due to the company’s union busting. Workers at Amy’s are organizing given a long string of health and safety issues. The Teamsters’ submitted a formal complaint, challenging Amy’s Kitchen’s certification and calling on B Corp to include workers in the resolution of the complaint:

As of this writing, B Corp has yet to respond, although they granted the certification in the midst of the workers’ public union campaign. However, the company’s statements make clear the value of B Corp certification to a company in presenting its values–and how readily the certification can be used to redirect and mislead those who might be concerned about human rights and labor violations. Further, it raises a large question regarding the role of workers in the accountability mechanisms of B Corp certification.

Will the B Corp Community Rise to this Challenge?

B Corp points to the existence of an “influential community” that will be instrumental in holding companies accountable. So far, we have not seen companies taking public stands to uphold the integrity that B Corp claims to stand for, or to hold other companies to the transformational standards they put forth. Some companies who count themselves as part of organic and fair trade movements have been outspoken in their concerns about the influence of multinational corporations and the status quo on those standards.

Does such a movement exist for B Corp as well?

It remains to be seen. However the certification of Nespresso, despite their strong association with multiple corporations with atrocious human rights abuses, and a product that’s inherently wasteful seems like a strong test case for peer accountability.

^[1] B Corp assessments denote the legal commitment required as “Mission Locked” on a company’s profile, describing it as ” A company with an Impact Business Model is intentionally designed to create a specific positive outcome for one of its stakeholders – such as workers, community, environment, or customers.”

The post Nespresso: Known for Human Rights Violations, Now B Corp Certified appeared first on Fair World Project.

Unfortunately, our warnings about the risks of developing a program without the involvement of farmworker organizers, as well as our specific critiques of the standards are being born out by what we are hearing from frontline organizers.

In May 2021, Fair World Project published the report Label before Labor: Fair Trade USA’s Dairy Label Fails Workers . Since then, that subheading has become an even grimmer reality. The report was published when Chobani yogurt bearing a fair trade label was available on store shelves but before the final standards were released in July of 2021. This article will review the updates made to the standard after the release of the report, and will also document what we know about the implementation of the standard.

The Label Before Labor report focused on 3 key areas of Fair Trade USA’s dairy label, as well as reviewing current research pointing to what would make for a more effective standard. Those areas of focus were:

• Inadequate standards development process
• Standards that are not fit for purpose
• Lack of enforcement mechanisms

This article will review updates in those three areas, with a focus on implementation included under the topic of enforcement mechanisms.

Fair Trade Dairy Standards Process Out of Touch with Research and Workers

The development of Fair Trade USA’s dairy program was decried in a statement by 30+ labor, food justice, and human rights groups, including Fair World Project, calling it “a sham process” and “an exercise that doesn’t reflect the needs and values of workers.” The “ Summary of Feedback and Response” published by Fair Trade USA after the release of the final standard confirms that assessment. The majority of the feedback summarized comes from farm owners and industry. Much of that feedback focuses on the costs involved in improving wages and working conditions.

The absence of organized farmworker voices and their advocates is clear. The summary of worker perspectives is “Overall, the dairy workers that we spoke to reported feeling happy and satisfied with their current work and living situation at their respective farms.” That assessment is dangerously out of touch with current research on farmworkers both in New York State and nationally, and the voices of worker advocates. Instead, it points to the ways that Fair Trade USA’s program continues to fail to address the power imbalances between farm managers and workers.

Finally, the Label before Labor report details concerns regarding stakeholder participation and how Fair Trade USA’s process was at odds with the best practices laid out by ISEAL, the global governance body for standards-setting. Still more concerning is that while the process was explicitly a pilot of standards for the dairy industry, the resulting standard was issued as an amendment to the Agricultural Production Standard that will be applied to all farms in the U.S. That’s vastly different in scope from what was announced. It seems reasonable to assume that far more people would have wanted to weigh in on the definition of fair work and “worker wellbeing” in the United States had it been clear that was what was at stake.

Fair Trade USA’s Standards Fail to Fill Regulatory Gaps

Redefining what is “fair” to match U.S. law that is grounded in injustice certainly doesn’t sound like it’s in line with fair trade principles.

Unsurprisingly, a standard development process that does not include workers is skewed against them, yielding a standard that fails to adequately address key labor and human rights issues.

Ethical certifications have long claimed to fill a regulatory gap that exists between local law and best practices or international norms. And there are large gaps in U.S. labor law, especially as it applies to farmworkers. In the United States, farmworkers are exempt from:

• Aspects of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), including overtime pay and child labor protections;
• National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which forbids employers from firing a worker for joining, organizing, or supporting a labor union.
• Farms employing 10 or fewer workers are exempt from enforcement actions by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA).
• Further, the U.S. has ratified just two of the eight core International Labor Organization (ILO) conventions, abstaining from committing to issues including the Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining, Forced Labor, Equal Pay, and Minimum Wages, as well as conventions on working hours.¹

Yet Fair Trade USA’s standards development process did little to bridge these gaps. Instead, the result of the dairy pilot has actually weakened the standards for workers on U.S. farms below the bar set for international production.  The stated reason? To “streamline” their standards and have them match “the unique legal definitions and operating context in the United States.” It’s worth noting the conditions that gave rise to that context in the United States.  Farmworker exemptions from standard labor law date back to a New Deal-era compromise with Southern legislators which was, in the words of one researcher, ” well-known to be a race-neutral cover for maintaining the domination of white supremacy in the South and excluding Black workers from labor law’s protection.” Redefining what is “fair” to match U.S. law that is grounded in injustice certainly doesn’t sound like it’s in line with fair trade principles.

Fair Trade USA’s Standards Continue Racist Double Standard for Farmworker Work Hours and Pay

One clear example of this is the issue of working hours. Like most fair trade certifications, Fair Trade USA had previously followed the ILO conventions on hours of work in their standards, limiting the regular workweek to 48 hours. In the revised standards for the United States, Fair Trade USA made major changes to their work week, as detailed in the side-by-side comparison in the box (emphasis added).

Overtime rules also got a significant overhaul. Thus farmworkers in the U.S. have both a higher cap for working hours and much more liberal guidance for how often their hours can exceed that cap (three months per year, or much of a harvest season, vs. four non-consecutive weeks).

In addition to appealing to “the unique legal definitions and operating context in the United States,” the feedback document from the standards development process highlights that workers *want* to work long hours. Such a  statement speaks to just how far removed from farmworker organizing the Fair Trade USA standards development process has been, as was also pointed out by researchers cited in a recent article in Jacobin Magazine.

Failing to address that power dynamic between worker and employers means that workers’ voices are not meaningfully included, as researcher Margaret Gray has written of elsewhere on farmworker pay equity. Without the voices of organized workers and worker advocates in the process, the results are skewed against workers.

Standards Fail to Address Root Causes of Low Wages

Ultimately, people work in order to get paid. If wages are low, people will want more hours to make ends meet. Yet by framing the issue of working hours as whether or not workers want to work long hours, Fair Trade USA’s “Summary of Feedback and Response” sidesteps that fundamental reality. While the section on working hours is long, the section on living wages is comparatively short. It notes that, “Dairy pilot participants also expressed support for living wage in concept but were concerned with their ability to close the gap without support from their buyer.” This is a reasonable concern. Dairy farmers are subject to low and volatile prices. Meanwhile, end buyers like Chobani stand to benefit from “fair trade” marketing. Yet instead of leveraging that brand benefit, Fair Trade USA opts not to include any requirement for brands to support farmworkers’ progress towards living wages. Fair World Project has previously criticized Fair Trade USA for placing all their emphasis on “awareness” of living wages without including timebound requirements for progress, and this standard continues that trend.²

This is not just a procedural issue. Instead, it undermines a key area where Fair Trade USA’s program falls short.  Academic researcher Elizabeth Bennett has noted that the strongest thing that voluntary sustainability standards such as Fair Trade USA can do to improve workers’ livelihoods is to require living wages and support the worker organizing that allows them to negotiate Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBAs) for better wages.

Worker Leadership + Brand Participation Supports Fair Livelihoods

It is worth noting that solutions to this living wage gap for farmworkers exist. In fact, they are currently being implemented in the dairy industry by the worker-driven Milk with Dignity program. The Label Before Labor report provides an in-depth comparison of this program with Fair Trade USA’s dairy label, so this will exclusively focus on wages.

Under the Milk with Dignity program, buyers are required to pay premium funds to support farms in complying with their binding Code of Conduct. The Code requires that workers on participating farms are paid at least the prevailing local minimum wage. This is significant given that farmworkers are exempt from many state minimum wages (and on smaller farms, from federal minimum wage requirements as well). Premium funds from brands are required to be used to get workers’ earnings to the locally benchmarked Rural Livable Wage. The Milk with Dignity Code of Conduct clearly spells out how they calculate the wage adjustment to incorporate health insurance and employer-provided housing. According to Milk with Dignity calculations, about 50% of Vermont dairy workers outside the Program make below the minimum wage. Meanwhile, workers on participating farms have seen wages rise so that most are now earning living wages.

Fair livelihoods for farmworkers are placed at the center of the standard, with a clearly articulated plan to transfer money from the brand at the top of the supply chain, who has most money and power, to the worker at the end of the chain. Instead of pitting farmworker against farmer in an effort to make ends meet, or laying the responsibility for making the food system profitable upon farmworkers’ shoulders, this addresses the root causes of the issue.

Fair Trade USA Going Against Trend of Farmworker Overtime, Rights and Dignity

Lastly, it is worth noting that the changes to the work week in Fair Trade USA’s updated Agricultural Production Standard (A.P.S.) for the United States are going against the current trend of farmworker organizing. There is growing recognition that the exclusion of farmworkers from getting the same overtime pay as other workers is rooted in racism and injustice . California and Washington State have recently been joined by New York State, Colorado, and Oregon in requiring overtime pay for farmworkers. While timelines for implementation vary, as do thresholds for hours worked, the trend is clear. By increasing the standard work week, Fair Trade USA chooses a side against those working for worker justice and fair livelihoods – as well as stepping out of line with international guidelines and recommendations from researchers.

Implementation of Fair Trade Dairy in Chobani’s Supply Chains

The Label Before Labor report detailed several key issues with Fair Trade USA’s dairy program based on an analysis of the standards. Several key issues highlighted included the explicit addition of at-will employment to the standard, that is, the right to fire workers for no cause, reinforcing a condition that labor advocates have pointed to as an obstacle to workers’ organizing. The report also underlined the limited scope of “know-your-rights” training requirements, lack of accessibility for reporting issues, and the standard’s reliance on annual audits to protect workers’ rights. This section of the report concludes:

Unfortunately, nearly one year after Chobani’s yogurt with Fair Trade USA’s “fair trade dairy” label appeared on the shelves, what we’re hearing from organizers underlines just how important it is to center workers—and the dire consequences that can come from implementing a program without their organizing.

Workers Don’t Know What “Fair Trade” is

Fair World Project remains in contact with organizers at the Workers Central of Central New York (WCCNY), who organize with farmworkers, including those on farms selling to Chobani and participating in the fair trade dairy program. These updates draw on conversations with those organizers, and many of the key points are also captured on our For a Better World podcast.

Chobani announced the pilot project with participating farms nearly three years ago and has been selling yogurt as “fair trade” for nearly a year. Yet what we hear from worker organizers is that overwhelmingly, workers on participating farms don’t know what “fair trade” is. That’s not just a semantic problem. If workers don’t know what fair trade is, it’s almost impossible for them to meaningfully claim the protections they are supposedly entitled to, or to meaningfully comment on what is happening in their workplaces.

Fair Trade Committees: Misrepresented and Disempowering

In episode 7 of For a Better World podcast, WCCNY organizer Crispin Hernandez explains “workers are told they are supposed to form a ‘fair trade committee.’ But the workers don’t know how to and they don’t give them this information to form a committee.” These “committees” are a critical aspect of many fair trade programs. In their standards, Fair Trade USA describes their purpose:

The fair trade committees are key to Fair Trade USA’s claims to “empower” workers. But reports from the dairy barns of New York don’t sound very empowering. Instead, worker organizers report that not only do workers not know what they’re supposed to be doing with their new mandate, the process is being run by Chobani and/or by farm managers. Once again, Fair Trade USA is putting marketing before substance. In a recent article, Fair Trade USA’s Producer Services Manager Jamie Padilla describes the Fair Trade Committees, saying, “The members are democratically elected by all workers. It’s a huge responsibility and, honestly, one of the most empowering things I’ve seen.” This statement misrepresents both the experience of worker organizers in Chobani’s supply chain and the actual process on paper in Fair Trade USA’s standards.

Module One of Fair Trade USA’s Agricultural Production Standard describes the formation of the Fair Trade Committee (FTC in the illustration), how members are to be chosen as well as a timeline for the activities.

In this example, Premium Participants would be farmworkers on participating farms, and could also include farm managers and small and mid-sized traders or facility managers who help to get the product to the Certificate Holder (Dairy Farmers of America or Cayuga Marketing, in this case). These participants are supposed to “understand fair trade,”  elect their own representatives, and have conducted and communicated a needs assessment on a clear timeline: “Before Fair Trade Premium is spent, or Year One at the latest.” That work has barely begun.

“Sign This Paper and You Can Get Money”

It remains unclear whether premium funds have been spent yet. Another troubling revelation in an interview for our For a Better World podcast describes funds going to workers (emphasis added):

The deal stated there “sign this paper and you can get money” does not sound democratic or empowering. Instead, it sounds rather coercive. More investigation is needed to understand how widespread such arrangements are. Yet overall, this anecdote underlines the risks of creating a Fair Trade Committee in the absence of worker-led organizing. Without clear structures for participatory democratic decision-making, premium allocations, especially direct payments to workers, fail to empower workers and can instead be used to prop up existing power structures, as has been previously noted by researchers.³

Dire Consequences of Fair Trade without Organized Workers

Research, including MSI Integrity’s definitive report Not Fit for Purpose, has pointed to just how essential it is that workers are involved in both the development and implementation of standards intended to benefit them.  Fair World Project’s ” Reference Guide to Fair Trade and Labor Justice Programs” has previously summarized that topic as “Formal Participation of the Intended Beneficiary.” The formal language may obscure the urgency, and the dire consequences that can result from this omission. But without the involvement – and leadership – of organized workers, programs repeatedly fail to protect workers’ rights, including their most basic safety needs.

Conversations with organizers in Chobani’s supply chains and efforts to learn where workers are participating in fair trade programs underline just how opaque these supply chains are, even to the people who labor in them. This fall, a person known to WCCNY to be working on a farm selling to Chobani and participating in the fair trade program was seriously injured. The account of his injury is captured in episode 7 of For a Better World podcast. The grim injury and its aftermath highlight the insurmountable challenges of trying to navigate Fair Trade USA’s standards as a tool for supporting someone in urgent need. Without clear guidance coming through fair trade programming, the next obvious place to turn would be the Fair Trade USA website.  In the Label Before Labor report, we highlighted how Fair Trade USA’s website is focused on the needs of consumers and businesses. Now, that lack of focus on worker accessibility comes into focus not just as a hypothetical failing, but as a grim reality. The site remains solely in English, the “Report an Issue” option is not even available from a mobile device (when viewing the page on desktop, it’s buried at the bottom). Ultimately, the takeaway is that the fair trade dairy program is not making these opaque supply chains any more transparent or accessible to the people who work in them.

Fear of Retaliation Remains Under Fair Trade Dairy Program

The “empowerment” that’s sold on fair trade packaging does not extend to the workplaces. Instead, the power dynamics that keep workers silent continue.

Fear of reprisal is a thread that has run throughout discussion of the fair trade dairy program. A definitive piece of research on conditions where the fair trade program was piloted is the report Milked: Immigrant Dairy Farmworkers in New York State, authored by the Workers’ Center of Central New York and the Workers’ Justice Center of New York. The report details an environment that is dangerous (two-thirds of workers surveyed had been injured on the job) and one where fear of retaliation is high.

Fear of reprisal—including the very real possibility of deportation—prevents people from raising concerns about pay, conditions, or even getting care for a serious injury.

Now, nearly one year after the launch of the fair trade dairy program, we continue to hear from organizers that those fears continue. Without the participation of organized workers or the robust engagement of worker advocates, there is little to combat that fear of reprisal. Workers have not spoken out publicly about the fair trade program – or the continued issues on participating farms—not only because they do not know about the fair trade program, but because the fair trade program has failed to change their realities. The “empowerment” that’s sold on fair trade packaging does not extend to the workplaces. Instead, the power dynamics that keep workers silent continue.

Fair Trade Dairy Fails Farmers Too

One critique was over-estimated in the Labor before Label report: the participation of small-scale farms. Small-scale dairy farmers have been hard hit by low prices, corporate consolidation, and U.S. policy that has overall been geared towards pushing them to “get big or get out.” Farmers are increasingly losing their farms and livelihoods–it would seem like these smallest farmers would be the logical target of a fair trade program for dairy.
Thus, when assessing the standards, as well as the average sizes of dairy farms in New York state and the size of their workforces among those surveyed for the Milked report, our assumption had been that there would be more small farms involved. The Label before Labor report detailed the many exemptions for farms with fewer than 6 employees– including the fact that many of the safety and basic trainings and workers’ rights standards in Fair Trade USA’s standard are marked as “Best Practice” not mandatory requirements for such farms. Instead, as we have learned the names of farms participating in the fair trade program, they are milking 2000-3000+ cows – much larger farms than initially expected, with workforces who should in fact be covered by the standards. While it’s good news that fewer workers will fall through the non-mandatory “Best Practice” loophole in theory, in practice, workers still don’t know what fair trade is.

Fair Trade Partner Dairy Farmers of America has Long Record of Unfair Business Practices

There’s a bigger issue at stake here as well. These large-scale dairies are part of the problem with the industrial food system. From small-scale farmers to workers to the climate crisis, this model has been linked to harm and, quite literally, un fair trade. The latter is not just a theoretical assertion. One of the “fair trade partners” listed on Fair Trade USA’s website for dairy is the mega-cooperative Dairy Farmers of America (DFA). While the traditional fair trade story has focused on small-scale farmers and their cooperatives as an engine of economic growth and fair livelihoods, Dairy Farmers of America has been cited and even sued multiple times for acting against their farmer-members’ interests. Over the years they have settled multiple lawsuits charging price fixing, as well as one that is currently ongoing . They’ve also been subject to charges of conspiring with other agribusinesses to drive down prices to farmers as well as using their market power to retaliate against any members who speak out.

Both dairy farmers and analysts alike have specifically pointed to DFA’s business practices as a key factor driving small-scale farmers out of the dairy business. In Episode 5 of For a Better World podcast, Claire Kelloway of Open Markets Institute sums up the issue:

Kelloway’s assessment takes a high-level perspective, naming the “democracy issue,” and questioning how the fair trade dairy standard addresses the issues with DFA. Fair Trade USA’s Agricultural Production Standard does not address key issues named in previous farmer suits: the concept of price fixing is wholly absent from the standards. The section on pricing (Objectives 5.2.2 – 5.2.3)⁴ is not scaled to an organization that controls one-third of the United States’ milk supply and is involved at all steps of processing and distribution.⁵ In this way, the diagnosis as a “democracy issue” is prescient. The key issue at play is, just as it is with workers, a failure to address the power imbalances at stake in the supply chain.

Conclusion

Fair Trade USA rolled out their “fair trade dairy” label in concert with Chobani in spring 2021 – amid a long campaign for Chobani to negotiate directly with the farmworkers in their supply chains.  The weaknesses in the standards highlighted in the Label before Labor report are having grimly predictable consequences as they are implemented.

Fair Trade USA’s standards development process was decried from the start as “an exercise that doesn’t reflect the needs and values of workers.” The resulting process gathered feedback that focuses on farm owner and brand input, and is dangerously out of step with the findings of researchers and farmworker advocates. Fair Trade USA’s new amendment to their Agricultural Production Standard for farms in the United States increases working hours. That’s a move that mirrors the United States’ long exemption for farmworkers from many workplace protections, an exemption grounded in racist discrimination–hardly the grounds for a standard that dubs itself “fair.”

Fair Trade USA’s standards don’t live up to the language of fairness that they sell. Further, the implementation of the dairy program is failing at even the most basic steps: too many farmworkers do not even know that their workplace is participating in a fair trade program. Further, we have heard troubling stories of what sound like coercive practices (signing a paper that says you agree with Chobani to get a bonus); bad living conditions, including bed bugs and cockroaches; and consistent fear of retaliation.

Frequently when Fair World Project critiques an ethical standard or program, the response is “But isn’t it better than nothing?” That’s not a choice that needs to be made here. Multiple other choices exist, and the workers in Chobani’s supply chains have made clear their demands – they are calling on Chobani to negotiate with them and have repeatedly made clear that a fair trade label does not address their calls for justice. Further, it’s worth noting that before partnering with Fair Trade USA to pilot the fair trade dairy label, Chobani met with members of the worker-driven human rights program Milk with Dignity. Per Milk with Dignity participants, “…instead of joining [the Milk with Dignity program], the company [Chobani] decided it was easier to put a label on their product.” It’s clearly not easy to partner with Fair Trade USA to pilot a label not developed for the dairy industry. Instead, the “easy” here speaks to the worker-driven, enforceable standards and binding contracts of the Milk with Dignity program–a far cry from the marketing-driven Fair Trade USA dairy label.

Options exist to meaningfully address the concentration of power in the dairy industry that is hurting both workers *and* farmers. But instead, Fair Trade USA has put their seal of approval on the very model that is driving the crisis in dairy – without meaningful mechanisms to address the power imbalances.

Having a fair trade dairy label that neither supports workers’ own demands for justice nor provides meaningful protections is not better than nothing. A fair trade label papers over the exploitative status quo with a thin veneer of “empowering” marketing. As more and more people become aware of the working conditions of the people who work in the fields and barns, they want to support something better. Instead, they’re being misled.

¹ ILO conventions represent the global consensus around fair labor. Conventions are not legally binding in themselves; countries who ratify them then pass laws to make them enforceable within their own countries. For a full list of ILO conventions that the U.S. has not ratified, see this list. The U.S. has declined to ratify these conventions because they are incompatible with existing U.S. labor law, including the exemptions for farmworkers cited above, and concerns that they may conflict with the ability of the private sector to profit from prison labor, as detailed in this policy brief from the U.S. Council for International Business.

² In the Feedback and Summary document, the response on living wage continues, “Fair Trade USA also plans to continue to create resources for supporting conversations between Certificate Holders and buyers to support living wage improvement, and in the future consider requirements to be included in the Trade Standard for buyers.” Such consideration would be welcome – and represent a shift from all Fair Trade USA’s current standards.

³ Sarah Besky has covered this issue in her research into fair trade tea plantations in India, https://www.sarahbesky.com/uploads/3/4/6/0/34604216/awr.pdf. Further, a study sponsored by Fairtrade International into premium usage found direct payments to workers covered by their Hired Labor standard to be a less effective use of premium funds https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02048855/document. This study also highlights the importance of the decision-making process in premium fund allocation to achieving stated goals around “empowerment.”  See: Allison Marie Loconto, Laura Silva-Castaneda, Nadine Arnold, Alejandra Jimenez. Participatory Analysis of the Use and Impact of the Fairtrade Premium. [Technical Report] Inconnu. 2019. ffhal02048855

⁴ Fair Trade USA’s Agricultural Production Standard  Objective 5.2.2: “The Certificate Holder has a written contract in place with all farmers and facility owners included in the scope of the Certificate regarding how prices will be paid and calculated and how conflicts will be resolved. The contract is followed.” Objectives 5.2.2a-c spell out what must be included in a contract between farmers and their cooperative as well as a definition of market prices—but says nothing about the larger issue, if the cooperative is large enough and fully integrated enough to have massive influence over those market prices.  https://www.fairtradecertified.org/sites/default/files/standards/documents/FTUSA_STD_APSUSAmendment_EN_1.0.0_0.pdf

⁵ Dairy Farmers of America is categorized as a “Producer” on Fair Trade USA’s website, thus their certification falls under the Agricultural Production Standard. While many coffee cooperatives are also tagged as “Traders,” Dairy Farmers of America is not, thus implying that they are not held to the separate Trade Standard. The Trade Standard includes some more relevant standards, although still falls short of clear pathways to remedy or enforcement. Traders only engage in fair and transparent trading practices.

Standard 2.5.1.a reads “There is no indication that traders engage in unfair trading practices that clearly damage the capacity for producers to compete or the capacity of producers to comply with Fair Trade USA production standards,” with the further clarification that “Unfair trading practices are ‘practices that grossly deviate from good commercial conduct and are contrary to good faith and fair dealing’ and are unilaterally imposed by one trading partner on another.”

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We’re not going to add another gift guide to the mix. Instead, our offering is a few suggestions on how to read those scorecards and best brands lists. There’s no one single way to make your values match your purchases – after all, they are *your* values. But each list is shaped by its own values and choices too.

What does “Slave-Free Chocolate” Mean?

SlaveFreeChocolate.org is both a list and an advocacy organization by the same name. One thing that’s important to note: “Slave-free Chocolate” is their vision, not a guarantee.
Their criteria includes, but is not limited to, certifications and the answers to three questions:

• Where do you source 100% of your cocoa?
• Do you have something on your website to spread awareness?
• Do you have initiatives that are either beneficial to the farmers or the environment?

Slave Free Chocolate made waves in the chocolate industry earlier this year when they removed Tony’s Chocolonely from their list. The reason? Despite their vision for “100% slave free chocolate,” Tony’s chocolate is made by Barry Callebaut, one of the major chocolate companies currently being sued for child labor in their supply chains. Those ties “[allow] them to produce chocolate cheaper than those who do everything ethically from soup-to-nuts,” Slave Free Chocolate’s director said in an interview.

What does Vegan Chocolate Mean?

Food Empowerment Project is a vegan advocacy group that has a chocolate list “To help people buy chocolate that does not involve the exploitation of human (children or adults) or non-human animals (such as cows and goats)”. Their criteria for inclusion on their list includes whether the chocolate is vegan as well as the answer to the questions:

• What countries of origin does your cocoa come from?
• What countries are your vegan products sold in?

Food Empowerment Project’s list does not rely on certification as they, rightfully, point out that certification does not guarantee that a product is free from child or forced labor (for more on this, see our podcast episode with Charity Ryerson of Corporate Accountability Lab). Instead, they focus on excluding chocolate produced in Western Africa or Brazil. While there is more evidence of forced labor being found in these locations, Food Empowerment Project’s standards focus on a broad geographical definition instead of looking at supply chains or business models.

What does Union-Made Mean?

AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions in the U.S., maintains a list of union-made products on their site. Their criteria is simple: is it made in a union factory in the United States? Their list is quite useful when looking for anything from appliances to restaurants. They also have a chocolate list – but what their list doesn’t contain is any criteria for ingredients such as cocoa, sugar, or palm oil, all of which are likely grown outside the United States. The AFL-CIO also maintains a database where one can check on current boycotts called by workers on brands.

What’s in a Scorecard?

Green America is part of a coalition that releases a Chocolate Scorecard ranking the largest chocolate companies on their policies relating to a range of human rights and environmental policies. The scorecard explicitly ranks companies on “company commitments and policies. It does not assess effectiveness or implementation.” Big chocolate companies’ collectively have a bad track record on following through on commitments—that’s how a company like Nestle can get a top mark on child labor, despite being sued over their failure to address child labor in their supply chains.
The stated goal of the scorecard is to make companies’ commitments public, and potentially shame the big chocolate companies into doing better.

What’s that Label Mean?

Finally, Fair World Project has two resources we make available. There’s a list of “Mission-Driven Brands” which focuses on companies whose business models are focused on original fair trade principles and benefit to small-scale farmers and artisans. The criteria are focused on business models instead of individual products, and lean heavily on membership in trade justice-focused organizations instead of certifications. The criteria also require that brands are not supporting or lobbying for harmful policies such as free trade deals.

We also have a “Reference Guide” to labels that you may see in the store. The criteria rank certifications on their standards—not their implementation. Scores are for topics that certifiers can take action on, including building in participation of the people they’re supposed to benefit (those are the “intended beneficiaries” mentioned) as well as things that companies and certifiers alike make a lot of claims about, such as fair wages and prices. It’s important to note what’s not here: there are no guarantees that the presence of these labels, especially the most common ones, offer any guarantees of human rights, unfortunately. Research and too many exposés have shown that a certifiers’ annual audit alone is inadequate to protect workers’ and human rights. Finally, some of the strongest protections for workers’ rights don’t have any label on the package to let you know they exist, for example, the Milk with Dignity Program.

Ethical Holiday Gifts – And Beyond

Zooming out from the details of all these criteria for a moment, one thing is clear. Our global economy is built on extraction and exploitation. And the same corporations that are doing a lot of the exploitation tend to have the biggest budgets to market their goods to us as in some way “ethical.” There’s no doubt that there’s a lot of noise to cut through.

And, too often, in the name of simplicity, a lot of nuance gets omitted. People are organizing and doing good, ethical work even in countries with high rates of child labor. Instead of casting blame based on geography, we can keep our focus pointed on the corporations whose buying practices are driving exploitation.

Sign up for our newsletter for ways to keep holding those corporations accountable, advocating for better policies, and backing the work of people around the globe building a better world every day.

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While this decision is disappointing and a blow to the six men’s case, it is not the sweeping corporate immunity that Cargill and Nestle’s lawyers had argued for. Instead, the court decision seems to further clarify just what kind of situation the Alien Tort Statute applies to. In this case, “the companies provide funding, planning, marketing, pesticides, education… that all occurred in the United States,” as Terry Collingsworth, one of the lawyers who crafted the case, explained on our “For a Better World” podcast. In their ruling, the Supreme Court stated that, “allegations of general corporate activity—like decision-making—cannot alone establish domestic application of the [Alien Tort Statute].” Multinational corporations have developed these long supply chains of suppliers and contractors across many industries. This decision chooses to overlook the massive power that these big corporations have to set the conditions in their supply chains. Instead, it reaffirms the value of having supply chains out of sight and keeping abuses offshore.

Corporate Solutions Are Failing to End Child Labor

The case, officially Cargill, Inc. v. Doe I, spans over 15 years, and too many continuing failures of voluntary commitments to end child labor in the cocoa industry. The case was initially brought in 2005 as the chocolate industry missed its first deadline to voluntarily address child labor under the Harkin-Engel protocol. Now, this verdict comes just a week after the International Labor Organization’s latest report warns that the rate of child labor is up for the first time in 20 years – and that growing inequality fueled by the global response to the pandemic is on track to increase that rate by an additional 9 million children by 2022. Regardless of the outcome of this specific Supreme Court case, it is high time for meaningful action on child labor.

It has been 20 years since the cocoa industry pledged to tackle child labor as part of the Harkin-Engel protocol, a voluntary deal struck to avoid binding legislation. In that time, we have seen numerous corporate social responsibility programs rolled out. Our “For a Better World” podcast spoke to people at the front lines of the rollout of those corporate pledges, and advocates and lawyers tracking the results. The resounding conclusion is that these corporate-led solutions have had limited effectiveness. Pledges to end child labor have not been coupled with meaningful efforts to pay a living income and tackle the root causes of child labor: poverty. Indeed, the number of cocoa-growing families in poverty is not declining. Just 9% of cocoa farmers in Ghana earned a living income, according to the 2020 Cocoa Barometer report. Recently, 35 organizations from across the globe, including Fair World Project, signed onto a statement calling on the chocolate industry to take real and meaningful action to address those root causes, dubbing the industry’s collective silence “shameful and inappropriate.”

It’s pretty clear that Nestle and Cargill are willingly and knowingly profiting off of forced child labor. Their arguments before the Court emphasized the threat this case posed to their “competitive advantage.” The Supreme Court did not go so far as to endorse that argument. Yet the Court’s ruling that those abuses are just a consequence of “general corporate activity” is an indictment of their whole business model. Real solutions are needed that are fit to tackle the systemic scope of the problem.

Real Change Means Real Accountability

We need to transform our food and farming systems so that forced child labor isn’t a norm in global supply chains, one that is deemed regrettable but allowed to persist. The fair trade movement has long advocated for a vision of global supply chains that enrich communities and support fair livelihoods for families. Yet voluntary commitments and ethical labeling are not going to bring about the sort of transformative change that is needed. A market-based approach to change cannot compete in a market where the competition can bank on the worst forms of abuse to keep their costs artificially low. While we may ambitiously speak of a world that puts people and planet before profit, that’s actually contrary to the shareholder primacy that’s baked into our current economy. Corporations’ responsibility is to their shareholders and to maximizing profits. Transformative change also requires real accountability and raising the cost of corporate abuses.

The U.S. Needs Meaningful Human Rights Due Diligence Legislation

This Supreme Court decision establishes the U.S. as an outlier around the globe, choosing to narrow the scope of corporate accountability. Meanwhile, countries around the world are moving towards mandatory human rights due diligence legislation, legislation that puts the onus on corporations to proactively address abuses in their supply chains instead of waiting for brave people to speak up and find their way to international courts of law.

Such legislation needs to include meaningful requirements for corporate accountability and address the full scope of human rights. That means recognizing living incomes and fair livelihoods as a human right. That also means centering the voices of those most impacted both in crafting the rules and in creating mechanisms for enforcement. Meaningful corporate accountability also means including corporate liability and access to remedy for those who are harmed. The Supreme Court’s decision in favor of Nestle and Cargill makes clear just how urgent such conditions are.

Read through the Supreme Court’s decision and there is one perspective that is noticeably absent. Nowhere in the decision is there any acknowledgement of the horrendous abuses that the six survivors of trafficking and child labor endured. Their case has been making its way through courts since 2005. In that time, another generation of young people have spent their youth doing hazardous work and risking their health and lives. Future solutions need to include these voices, and their right to live and work with dignity.

Photo Credit: Photo by Claire Anderson on Unsplash https://unsplash.com/photos/Vq__yk6faOI?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditShareLink  

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Fair Trade USA’s standards development process is so flawed that it has been denounced by labor organizations on multiple occasions. Over the past decade, labor and human rights groups have decried the lax standards and corporate-friendly approaches to enforcement put forth in both apparel and produce standard development. Last year, as Fair Trade USA announced their draft standard and pilot process for dairy, 30+ labor, human rights, and food justice organizations signed onto a statement opposing the pilot of the standard, calling it a “sham process.”

Fair Trade USA’s Standards Fail to Protect Workers

Fair Trade USA’s heavily criticized process has yielded standards that are structurally unfit for their purported purpose. Over the last decade, Fair World Project has repeatedly highlighted the substantial failings of Fair Trade USA’s standards on paper, including a 2016 report, Justice in the Fields, that strongly cautioned against relying on their label to protect workers’ rights and safety.

Unfortunately, those standards-based critiques proved all too real when Fair Trade USA certified a Fyffes melon plantation in Honduras where workers had documented over a decade of ongoing and unremediated abuses. The certification had no impact on working conditions on the plantation. Instead, it highlighted Fair Trade USA’s inability to find problems and ensure that standards are met – the “fair trade” certification was only revoked after the launch of an international public campaign supporting the workers’ demands for decertification. Just one month before the public campaign that caused Fair Trade USA to decertify the Fyffes’ plantation in Honduras, Paul Rice wrote confidently that their last audit, “did not yield any evidence of ongoing anti-union activities or human rights abuses.”

While Fair Trade USA rolls out their dairy program with claims that it is backed by “a rigorous 200-point checklist of social, labor, and environmental criteria,” it is worth noting that the standard piloted (and presumably currently being used for products on the shelf) specifically eliminates environmental criteria included in other standards. Further, their “checklist” is based on the same Agricultural Production Standard that has failed to ensure workers safe conditions in the past.

Product Marketing but No Public Standards

Yet no one can actually comment on the final dairy-related additions to their agricultural standard as it has yet to be released to the public, despite the fact that yogurt bearing a fair trade label has been on store shelves for weeks. This fact underscores the ongoing critique that this fair trade label is more of a marketing exercise than a program intended to protect workers’ rights or transparency, as their statements have suggested.

As recently as last week, organizers confirmed that workers on New York farms that were supposedly participating in Fair Trade USA and Chobani’s pilot program were unaware of the program or what it meant for their work. If workers are neither involved nor aware of the program, it is clear that any claims to “empower” them are no more than feel-good marketing copy.

Furthermore, calls from the Workers Center of Central New York for Chobani to resume conversations with their members remain unanswered by Chobani. Fair Trade USA has chosen to apply their label to yet another situation with an ongoing labor dispute.

Organized Workers are the Best Defenders of their Rights

Fair Trade USA’s release of a “Fair Trade Dairy” program goes against a growing body of research confirming that annual audits and corporate social responsibility programming alone are inadequate to protect workers’ rights. Instead, models developed *and* led by workers are gaining respect for making demonstrable progress towards improving workers’ conditions through organizing, training, and participation and leadership at every step of the program. If Chobani is truly interested in improving conditions for workers, they should look to the leadership of programs such as Migrant Justice’s Milk with Dignity program that are already doing just that in Ben & Jerry’s supply chains and engage with organizations like Workers Center of Central New York who is organizing with workers in their supply chains already. In the words of an organizer with Migrant Justice, “Companies see these certification programs as easier and cheaper and we are like, ‘No, actually, go with us. It’s not cheaper, it takes more time, but it’s real and concrete.’”

Lastly, Fair World Project has long decried the ways that Fair Trade USA has co-opted the language and goodwill of a movement and a message developed by small-scale farmers and their coffee cooperatives. It is particularly egregious in the case of Fair Trade dairy. Fair Trade USA’s messaging borrows the feel-good cooperative messaging to market a program driven by the corporate players at the top of the U.S. dairy industry with no democratic involvement from the most impacted people. That’s highly relevant here as one of the root causes for the declining prices for farmers and conditions for workers is ultimately the crushing corporate consolidation in the dairy industry. To provide cover for massive players in the industry while co-opting the messaging of small-scale farmers is to add insult to the injuries piled up by weak, unenforceable standards.

Fair Trade USA’s dairy standard is nothing but a hollow veneer of marketing. Despite claims of transparency and “empowerment” for workers, there is no public standard to evaluate. Further, if a claim is being made to “empower” workers, we’re left with a final question: Why are the very organizations with which dairy workers are building their own power left as an afterthought in its development?

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TAKE ACTION
 

End the Global Vaccine Apartheid

“A global vaccine apartheid is unfolding.” Those are the words of Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAids and a UN Undersecretary General. At the beginning of the pandemic, global leaders pledged to do everything in their powers to ensure equitable access to tests, treatments, and vaccines for COVID-19. Yet as the pandemic has continued, that’s not what has happened. Instead, a report shows that 9 in 10 people in poorer, majority Black and Brown countries will not get vaccinated until sometime in 2024, unless urgent action is taken. Meanwhile, wealthier nations have hoarded enough doses to vaccinate their entire populations three times over by the end of 2021 (assuming all trials go as planned). Countries like the U.S., Canada, and the UK have just 14% of the world’s population, but have contracts for 53% of the most promising vaccines.

So far, while the President has committed to addressing racial inequities and ending the pandemic, his administration has stayed silent on the World Trade Organization (WTO) rule that is enforcing this vast inequality. But it is well within their power to take action.

Back in October 2020, India and South African representatives introduced a proposal that would allow for increased production of a COVID-19 vaccine and rush more urgently needed doses to people around the globe. The proposal specifically calls for a temporary waiver of the WTO’s Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) agreement, allowing generic and other manufacturers to make more doses of live-saving vaccines.  Big Pharma companies oppose such a move as it would undercut their profits. Yet these vaccines developed by AstraZeneca/Oxford, Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech have received more than $100 billion dollars in public financing. Big Pharma corporations are more than happy for the public to take the risk while they reap all the profits. In an even more grim irony, many people in India, South Africa, and Brazil who participated in vaccine trials would likely be denied access to doses if the status quo prevails.

Trade Deals Need to Put People Before Profits

In this case, there is a relatively simple action that the Biden administration can take – in fact, all they need to do is drop their opposition to the TRIPS waiver and put saving lives before protecting corporate monopolies.

The challenge of vaccine distribution is yet another way that this pandemic is revealing the ways that our system is rigged in favor of protecting corporate power and profits. Too often, trade deals are inked behind closed doors. Corporate lobbyists help write in their clients’ priorities, while civil society, those advocating for working people and the environment, are sidelined. The result: rules that protect corporate profits over the clear, pressing interest we all have in ending this pandemic.

And let’s be clear—there are outsized profits being made. The World Health Organization has warned against “vaccine nationalism” and price-gouging as Pfizer/BioNTech is on track to pocket an 80% profit margin. That’s the same Pfizer who was heavily involved in writing the very global trade rules that established corporate intellectual property as we know it in 1995. Before that, countries had their own rules—indeed, before TRIPS, India didn’t allow its well-developed pharmaceutical industry to patent drugs.  These international norms are relatively new—and crafted by the same corporations who stand to profit from them.

WTO Rules Enforce Inequities

These World Trade Organization (WTO) rules also further reinforce the long-standing inequities in our global trade system. The conflict playing out right now with richer countries blocking vaccine access has a long history–and it begins with the very division of the world into richer and poorer countries. Countries like the U.S. and United Kingdom have amassed great wealth through colonization and exploitation of people & communities around the globe. By one calculation, Britain extracted nearly $45 trillion from India during the colonial period from 1765-1938. These “rich” countries are the same ones who have been exploiting the global trading system for centuries. And the WTO rules too often help enforce and continue that same balance of power and entrench the legacy of colonialism.

South Africa’s health ministry reports that they were set to be charged 2.5 times more than European Union countries for doses of the same COVID-19 vaccine. Big Pharma corporations price gouging has the potential to drive poorer countries deeper into debt—and drag on the pandemic. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Advocates in South Africa fought hard to get HIV/AIDS drugs, and with them the understanding that access to essential medicines is a human right. Instead of permitting corporate monopolies on intellectual property—especially life-saving medicines developed with public funding—it’s time to recognize that these vaccines are “a global public good.”

Access to Essential Medicines is a Human Right

“Failure to change course will come at the cost of millions of lives and livelihoods around the world; to our progress on tackling poverty…and to our collective public health and economic security,” warns Winnie Byanyima. The world’s richest nations have hoarded enough COVID-19 vaccine to treat their populations three times over by the end of 2021. Meanwhile, billions of people will go without for years. This disparity is a human rights and racial justice issue.

It is also a practical one. As long as outbreaks continue, more variants can emerge to contend with the vaccines. Until people worldwide can access vaccines and treatments, there can be no end to the public health or economic crises anywhere.

TAKE ACTION
 

“Newcastle Disease vaccination in Mayurbhanj district, Odisha state, India” by GALVmed is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

The post Put People before Big Pharma Profits: Make COVID-19 Vaccines Accessible appeared first on Fair World Project.

The facts laid out in the case are awful. And what’s equally awful is that Nestle and Cargill have been pouring resources into arguing against accountability for fifteen years now.

Nestle & Cargill Know There’s Child Labor in Cocoa

None of the lawyers before the Supreme Court are claiming that there is no child labor in the cocoa farms of Cote d’Ivoire where Cargill and Nestle get their cocoa. Indeed, a new report from the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago released this fall confirms that 1.5 million children are currently harvesting cocoa in Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire, where 70% of the world’s cocoa is produced. And that proportion of child labor has gone up 14% in the past decade.

Nestle, Cargill, and the chocolate industry as a whole, are well aware that child labor is endemic in West African cocoa farming. Indeed, nearly 20 years ago, they pledged to take action to reduce child labor. That pledge, Harkin-Engel Protocol, aimed to eliminate the worst forms of child labor through an agreement bringing together the chocolate industry, NGOs, and government. The agreement was voluntary and non-binding—and contained multiple deadlines for progress that have passed over the years. Meanwhile, the problem remains. And, as the report released this fall shows, the problem is getting worse.

Child labor is just one symptom of a much bigger problem in the chocolate industry—poverty. While millions of children over generations continue to miss out on childhood and education, Nestle and Cargill continue to pay ultra low prices to the people who grow their cocoa. And if these massive multinational corporations won’t pay a fair price for cocoa, who’s stuck making up the difference? As we’ve detailed before, it’s the farmer—and our planet.

Corporations Must Be Held Accountable

The argument at stake in the case Nestle USA vs Doe is whether Nestle and Cargill “aided and abetted” the forced labor that the plaintiffs endured through their cocoa purchasing practices. The Alien Tort Statute (ATS) that the case cites dates all the way back to 1789—because, yes, that’s how long we’ve known that there needs to be accountability under law for violations of human rights. The law grants federal jurisdiction over wrongful acts, or torts, “‘committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States‘ and brought by non-US citizens. The ATS applies only to the most egregious and widely recognized human rights violations: slavery (and forced labor), torture, crimes against humanity, and similar crimes,” explains Corporate Accountability Lab.

Nestle and Cargill are arguing that they cannot be held liable for these appalling incidents of forced child labor as the law should only apply to individuals, not corporations. Further, they claim that the cases are too far removed from the U.S. for the Supreme Court to have jurisdiction. In both cases, the sum total of their argument boils down to a position that would allow U.S. corporations a free pass. In the words of Terry Collingsworth of International Rights Advocates, a non-profit representing the plaintiffs, “It is virtually impossible to imagine how we could get enough evidence to sue any individual at these corporations … so this would effectively allow [some companies] to continue using child slaves with impunity.”

Further, if Nestle and Cargill argue that U.S. courts are not the place to address harms inflicted by U.S. corporations doing business, they are essentially making the case that there is nowhere they should be held accountable. We know corporations already act as if distant supply chains are out of sight and out of mind. Now they’re making the case they should be outside the law as well.
 

Corporations Must Be Held Accountable

Nestle and Cargill are desperately trying to build themselves a legal loophole. So desperately in fact that part of their brief includes the argument, “Even the firm that supplied Zyklon B gas, which the Nazis used to kill millions, was not indicted—the prosecutions were instead against the owner and two employees.”  If your argument hinges on comparing yourself to Nazis, it is clear that you have lost the moral high ground. 

The reality is that Nestle and Cargill are guilty—and so is their entire business model. The conventional chocolate trade is built on exploiting the people who grow cocoa and paying prices well below the cost of production. Nestle has put plenty of money into voluntary sustainability initiatives. They have even instituted child labor monitoring and remediation systems (CLMRS) in the years since the suit was first filed. Yet by continuing this suit, they seem to claim that they should be the ultimate judges of their own behavior—even as they demonstrate how immoral their judgment is.  

Voluntary corporate initiatives cannot take the place of actual accountability. Nor does the impact reporting of sustainability programs count as redress for real harms done.
 
One of the many briefs filed in support of the formerly enslaved child workers was on behalf of 18 small- to mid-sized chocolate companies, including fair trade companies Alter Eco and Theo Chocolate. In that amicus, or “friend of the court” brief, they argue, “Like Petitioners, amici have made commitments to ensure their supply chains are free of forced child labor. Unlike Petitioners, amici use effective business models to ensure compliance with these commitments.” By paying higher prices for cocoa and building transparent supply chains, these companies are reasonably well assured that they are not relying on forced child labor for their cocoa—or, if their efforts at due diligence have failed, they support legal steps to hold them responsible. 

These companies demonstrate that it is possible to make chocolate without depending on the exploitation of the people who grow it—not only is it possible, it’s really the only ethical choice. Corporate social responsibility can’t just be a feel-good marketing exercise, it must be coupled with real accountability.

Human Rights Must Come Before Profits

Even as Nestle and Cargill are arguing for a pass on human rights abuses in their supply chains, the rest of the world is moving on. In Europe, multiple countries and the European Union are weighing mandatory Human Rights Due Diligence laws. In fact, in Europe, Nestle even pays lip service to supporting such legislation. 

Nestle is one of the most boycotted companies in the world. Cargill was awarded “The Worst Company in the World” by the NGO Mighty Earth. Their arguments in front of the Supreme Court this week highlight the threat this case poses to their “competitive advantage.” Which is to say that they are conceding what we already know: Their business model is built on the exploitation of people–and our planet. It’s high time that our legal structures put human rights ahead of obscene corporate profit. A Supreme Court decision in favor of human rights and corporate accountability would be a good step in that direction.
 

Photo Credit: “Cocoa Pods” by Frank Kehren is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
“Cargill Cocoa Bags” – International Rights Advocates

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