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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This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the chocolate industry’s promise to end child labour in the cocoa sector of Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire, a commitment they made under the 2001 Harkin-Engel Protocol and renewed again with the 2010 Framework of Action. Furthermore, it is the International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour.

This year should have been a landmark in the fight against child labour in cocoa. Instead, the cocoa sector as a whole has been conspicuously quiet on this topic.

This year should have been a landmark in the fight against child labour in cocoa. Instead, the cocoa sector as a whole has been conspicuously quiet on this topic.

Child labour is still a reality on West African cocoa farms, and there is strong evidence that forced labor continues in the sector as well. Recent reports – such as Ghana’s GLSS 7 survey and the study of the University of Chicago commissioned by the United States government – show that close to 1.5 million children are engaged in hazardous or age-inappropriate work on cocoa farms in Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire. The vast majority of these child labourers are exposed to the worst forms of child labour, such as carrying heavy loads, working with dangerous tools and increasing exposure to harmful agrochemicals.

After two decades of rhetoric, voluntary initiatives, and pilot projects, it is clearer than ever that ambitious, sector-wide action is needed, coupled with binding regulations, to address both child labour and the poverty that lies at its root.

These solutions must include regulations for mandatory human rights due diligence for companies operating in all major cocoa consuming countries.

These solutions must include regulations for mandatory human rights due diligence for companies operating in all major cocoa consuming countries, including avenues for legal remedy in those companies’ home countries. We note with interest the developments around regulations in the EU, although the announced delays are concerning. We also observe that the United States – the world’s number one cocoa consuming country – is particularly lagging in regulatory developments on this issue.

The industry, however, cannot use a lack of regulation as an excuse not to shoulder their own responsibility. As such, every chocolate and cocoa company should have a system in place that monitors and remediates child labour in all of their value chains with a child labour risk. The impact of these systems must be communicated publicly and transparently in a way that enables meaningful participation and access to remedy for workers and their representatives.

In parallel, effective partnerships between producer and consumer countries are needed to work on the necessary enabling environment. These must be developed in a much more inclusive manner than previous attempts, bringing in civil society organisations, independent trade unions, local communities and farmer representatives. Adequate resources must be provided to enable these local actors to participate as equals in the development and implementation of solutions.

Child labour can only be effectively tackled if its root causes are also adequately addressed.

Child labour can only be effectively tackled if its root causes are also adequately addressed. As such, the cocoa sector must ensure that child labour approaches are deeply embedded into realistic and ambitious strategies to achieve a living income for all cocoa households. Such strategies must include the payment of fair and just remuneration at the farm gate; prices need to be sufficient to provide a living income. There are clear calculations available for Living Income Reference Prices, which are not even close to being met.

In all, this process must deliver time bound and measurable action plans that are ambitious enough to cover the full scope of the challenge ahead.

It is time that the cocoa sector lived up to its promises and started to deliver on a sector wide and ambitious plan to tackle child labour and poverty. The industry’s collective silence this year is shameful and inappropriate.

Signatories 

ABVV/FGTB HORVAL – Belgium 

Be Slavery Free – Australia

Child Labour Coalition – United States

Conservation Alliance International – Ghana

COOPASA – Côte d’Ivoire

COOPS Ecam M’bloussouè – Côte d’Ivoire 

EcoCare Ghana – Ghana

Fair Trade Advocacy Office – Belgium

Fair World Project – United States

Fairtrade – Global 

Forum Fairer Handel e.V. – Germany Freedom United – Global 

Global Media Foundation – Ghana Green America – United States 

Inades Formation Côte d’Ivoire – Côte d’Ivoire 

Indigenous Women Empowerment Network – Ghana

INKOTA-netzwerk – Germany International Rights Advocates – United States 

ISCC – Germany 

Mighty Earth – United States 

ONG GAYA – Côte d’Ivoire 

Oxfam – Global 

Public Eye – Switzerland 

Rainforest Alliance – Global 

Réseau des Jeunes Entrepreneurs de Côte d’Ivoire (REJECI) – Côte d’Ivoire

SchokoFair-Stoppt Kinderarbeit! – Germany 

SEND GHANA – Ghana 

Solidaridad Europe 

Solidaridad West Africa 

Südwind – Austria 

SÜDWIND-Institute – Germany 

The Human Trafficking Legal Center – United States 

Tropenbos Ghana – Ghana 

VOICE Network – Global 

World Fair Trade Organization – Global 

Photo Credit: Tetiana Bykovets – Unsplash – @tetiana_bykovets

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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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BUILDING KNOWLEDGE BUILDS POWER

The Center acts as a platform for a diversity of initiatives and organizing, all driven by our membership. Currently, we’re part of a statewide campaign with the Driving Families Forward coalition, fighting for driver’s licenses for undocumented people in the state of Massachusetts. That campaign was voted on unanimously by our Worker Committees because most of our members are undocumented. The peril of driving without a license is a huge issue that they face. No matter where you work, you have to drive to get there: to bring your kids to school or go to the doctor. And, just as in other parts of the country, people get racially profiled and pulled over. Those little traffic stops then often drag them into the immigration system.

We also do know-your-rights trainings on immigration and labor laws. We find that often, people either don’t know about the laws that are there to protect them or think that the laws don’t apply to them because they are undocumented. A lot of what we do to build power involves preparing people with the tools and knowledge to defend themselves. Last night, I was meeting with a farmworker I hadn’t seen in a while. When I first met her a year ago, she spoke very limited Spanish. She’s Guatemalan and her native language is Acateco, and it was very hard for me to understand her. She told me about a situation she faced on the job where she got really sick as a result of pesticide exposure in the strawberry fields where she worked. Her throat swelled up, she had to go to the hospital, and then she got fired because of needing to miss work. Yesterday she said to me, “Now I tell my manager, ‘you have rights, but I have rights too. You can’t treat me that way.’ And now he doesn’t bother me as much because he knows that I am going to tell him what my rights are.” What shifted in the last year was, in her words, that she has been coming to the Worker Committee meetings and going to our workshops, and “Now I know that I have rights.”

We do a lot to educate and bring people together, such as soccer tournaments, art events, and concerts. Immigrating to the United States can be really isolating, and even when people have family nearby, their communities have been fragmented through the process of migration. We provide a space and a platform for people to come together, to strategize, and to take collective action against oppression. These events also build community and allow us to get to know each other so that when emergencies come up, we are able to respond and support one another. In the wake of the 2016 election, we also formed a rapid response network, Solidarity in the Streets, which has now grown to include 3,000 people. Through this network, we’re able to organize mutual aid programs — including a rideshare and food distribution program — for which our members actively solicit donations and pass out supplies at our Worker Committee meetings. So, there are a lot of ways that we try to plug people into this supportive, resilient network — to organize and to lean on in the absence of basic services that aren’t provided anywhere else.

COMMUNITY AS CAPITAL

It’s always been our dream to not only push back against abusive and oppressive systems, but to create spaces where people can build hope and alternative economic structures. So, when an organization called All Farmers — which does land access work with refugees and people of color — reached out to us asking if our members might be interested in farming a seven-acre plot near Northampton, we jumped at the opportunity.

Our Worker Committees were really enthusiastic about the idea of starting a farm. Many members work long hours on farms, but at the end of the day, they go home and can’t afford to buy the kind of vegetables that they are breaking their backs producing in the fields. Many of them were farmers in Latin America before coming to the States, so they have a lot of knowledge and skills. That initial enthusiasm in the Worker Committees then evolved into seven people who got serious and decided to organize and form a worker cooperative farm.

The summer of 2019 was their first season. Throughout the summer, members of our Solidarity in the Streets network went to weekly work parties to help out on the farm. We started very small, actively growing 2 acres of vegetables on the 4.5 acres that we lease. All of the members still work their day jobs — so they would sometimes spend 60-70 hours a week working in the fields and then, on their one day off, worked on starting their own farm.

Now the farm has a full year under its belt and a new name, too: Riquezas del Campo. At the start of the first season, all we had was a bare field: no irrigation system, no shed to put tools in, nothing. But, once again, we were able to leverage support from Solidarity in the Streets. Carpenters, including members of the Springfield Carpenters Union, Local 336, built a beautiful shed. A local ceramicist helped craft a simple, but elegant, irrigation system, hand digging a pond out of a streambed and siphoning water into donated storage tanks to flow into gravity-fed drip hoses. At the volunteer work party days, students and people from all kinds of backgrounds, including other farmworkers who aren’t part of the project, all came together to help build out the needed infrastructure.

The farm has been a site for all kinds of mingling and relationship building across cultural, class, and racial divides. And this is a key part of how the farm fits into our organizing. It gets tiring going to workshops and meetings, but the farm is a space where we can cross-pollinate, eat together, hang out, and cultivate hope. And, I think equally important, the land offers us all a place where we can heal. In the beauty of the fields and the woods that surround us, filled with fresh air and birdsong, I see how just being there together helps us relate to one another in a more grounded way. We need more spaces like this for collective catharsis.

During the 2019 season, members planted 30 different varieties of vegetables: tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, watermelon, broccoli, and more. They took produce home to their families and brought crates of vegetables to the Worker Committee meetings for everyone to share. And they sold nearly 2,000 pounds of produce to the consumer co-op just down the road from us.

A COOPERATIVE VISION FOR ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY

At our annual membership meeting, all the groups who organize with us come together, and the members vote on organizational priorities. Last year, the results were overwhelming votes in favor of the cooperative farm, as well as the driver’s license campaign. And our members want to work on supporting the future development of more worker cooperatives. People are creative and entrepreneurial; they have a lot of what they need to be able to become their own bosses. But they don’t have access to tools, literal or figurative. They don’t have fair access to capital, financial or cultural. They know how to produce, but they don’t own the means of production. Our organizing approach is two-pronged: offensive and defensive. We fight against exploitative systems, but also build small-scale models of what we want instead. And economic democracy is a big part of the world that we envision.

Overall, this farm is sort of a star in the constellation of organizations that we want to be a part of building. And we see this as one small piece of the struggle for a more just economy. The dream is for this farm to provide real livelihoods for all of the co-op members, for them not to have to continue working on other people’s farms. They want to be able to make a living wage at their own farm. This is, of course, an ambitious vision, but we are exploring ways to make it happen, including through value-added and niche products. And really, I think the support of our community will make it possible. Like Riquezas del Campo, the Workers Center is a small organization. But we have a lot of power because we bring thousands of people together, both to fight against exploitative systems that aren’t working for us and to experiment with better ways of organizing our collective labor and resources.

Download the Full Article [.pdf]

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Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, there were an estimated 152 million children engaged in child labor globally. Almost half (48%) of them were between the ages of 5-11.  It’s easy to skim over big numbers like that. Statistics have a way of rushing us along to the next fact. But take a minute to consider the 5-year olds you know, the 8-year olds, the 11-year-olds. Imagine them working long days, most likely in farming (that’s where 71% of child labor happens). While plenty of farm kids do chores, there is a difference between those chores (sometimes referred to as “child work” amongst people who work on these issues) and the child labor we’re talking about here. Children can learn valuable skills working alongside their parents. Chores can be a way of passing on knowledge, history, and culture—but child labor is something different entirely.

Advocates define child labor as work that interferes with a child’s ability to be a kid. Wielding a machete or running dangerous equipment, handling agrochemicals, or other dirty or dangerous tasks all fit into the definition of child labor. So does any work that interferes with a child’s ability to attend school. In short, child labor is work which “by its nature or the circumstances in which it is carried out, is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children,” according to the International Labour Organization (ILO).

Some ways to take action

Poverty is a Key Cause of Child Labor

One of the key causes of child labor is poverty. Farming families who are struggling to make ends meet may be unable to pay for workers and have their own children do the job instead. Or they may be forced to make ends meet by having children work for pay on other farms. Many children end up working because they lack access to free schooling. A United Nations report points out that that lack of access to schooling is due to our global priorities, estimating that universal education for the world’s children would run between $10-30 billion. That’s about 0.7-2.0% of annual global military spending.

Child labor is most prevalent in countries that have been heavily impacted by colonialism throughout the centuries. Those colonial powers started out extracting agricultural goods (coffee, cotton, sugar, gold), and today that extraction continues. Development loans from entities like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) often end up worsening the situation for the people living in the countries that receive them. Loans often include “structural adjustments” that push local governments to cut health care, education, and other programs. All these cuts harm children and increase the pressure driving them to child labor.

Fast Fashion Fuels Child Labor

Multinational corporations are part of the problem as well—and a big part. Fast fashion brands churn out cheap clothes—and use children’s labor at every step of the long, complex supply chain. Children pollinate and pick cotton, where they are exposed to toxic insecticides and forced to work long hours. Children also run the spinning machines to make the yarn for clothes, as well as laboring long days doing fine detailed tasks like sewing buttons, cutting and trimming threads, embroidering and sewing on sequins. Teenage girls in India’s spinning mills tell of working 12-hour days with no breaks for lunch or to use the bathroom. All this to keep down the cost of this season’s latest trends Now with COVID-19, fast fashion companies are under fire for leaving garment workers without factory jobs or pay.

Child Labor is On the Rise on Cocoa Farms

Google “chocolate” and “child labor” comes up just below “chocolate cake”—that’s how intertwined the two are. Nearly 20 years ago, major chocolate companies like Hershey’s, Mars, and Nestle pledged to eliminate child labor in their supply chains. They missed deadlines in 2005, 2008, and 2010. They’re coming up on another one this year, even as a forthcoming report¹ finds that they’re about to miss it by a long shot. Child labor in the main cocoa-producing countries of Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire has increased 13% and the percentage of children doing *hazardous* labor also increased. While researchers point to the complexity of the problem, one thing is clear: chocolate companies continue to be very profitable, and cocoa farmers continue to earn very little. Before the pandemic, cocoa farming families in West Africa earned an average of just $0.78 per day. Meanwhile, as we’ve pointed out before, Hershey’s extracted $1.15 billion in profits in 2019. Pledges and programs continue to multiply across the cocoa industry. Yet the chocolate industry as a whole is moving in the wrong direction as prices fall and cocoa farmers continue to claim a smaller piece of the price of the final bar. Their share of the price a chocolate bar? Just 6.6% in 2015, down from 15% in 1980. Until chocolate companies pay farmers fairly, these pledges remain just empty words.

Weak Corporate Certifications Are Not Solving the Problem

Just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the news, an investigation found children as young as 8 years old picking coffee destined for Starbucks and Nespresso. The reporting describes “children working 40-hour weeks in grueling conditions, picking coffee for a daily wage little more than the price of a latte.” Starbucks was quick to distance themselves from the news, pointing to their own C.A.F.E. Practices audits and their “zero tolerance” policy for child labor. They also noted that they had not purchased from the farms in question in the most recent harvest, or would not in the future. The playbook of denial and distancing was not so different from when forced labor was found on Brazilian plantations selling to Starbucks multiple times last year. Yet the “C.A.F.E. Practices” standards that Starbucks holds up as evidence of their ethical purchasing are weak, as noted in the International Guide to Fair Trade Standards. In an industry known for extreme price volatility, they lack a minimum price requirement and leave it up to “the market” to determine premiums. These ongoing revelations underscore the fact that these company Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs are not up to actually supporting fair livelihoods and safety for farm families.

Child Labor is a U.S. Problem Too

As a U.S.-based organization, it’s important to point out that child labor is not just something that happens outside our borders. An estimated 500,000 children work on farms across the U.S., doing long days of backbreaking labor. And it is perfectly legal. Under federal labor law, children as young as 12 can legally work unlimited hours on farms of any size as long as they have parental permission and don’t miss school. And U.S. law permits children working in agriculture to do hazardous work at 16 (the age is 18 for non-farm work). More child workers die in agriculture than in any other industry in the U.S. Bills have repeatedly been introduced to Congress—and elected officials have failed to act on them. As one advocate asked,”Why must we rely on children to harvest fruits and vegetables in America? Why must Latino children bear the brunt of unjust laws?  The child labor exemptions in U.S. labor law constitute a de facto form of discrimination and why allow young children to work in what is the most dangerous industry?  These loopholes have been around since the enactment of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938.  Isn’t it time to protect all our children equally?”

As is true around the world, one of the main causes of child labor in the U.S. is poverty. The families who tend the fields and grow our nations’ food struggle to put food on their own tables. One investigation into child labor in the onion fields in Texas found that 81% of households were food insecure.

While some states may have higher minimum wages, U.S. law exempts farmworkers from minimum wage requirements. That’s due to a loophole carved out when our current labor law was written. At the time, farmworkers were mostly Black and powerful landowners and Southern legislators struck a deal to exclude farmworkers from many protections including minimum wage laws, overtime, and rights to join a union. While some of those laws have changed along the way, too many remain. The U.S. also remains an outlier in the global legal framework, remaining one of just a handful of countries who has not signed onto the ILO Convention 138, which sets a minimum age for work. The U.S. also refuses to sign onto a number of ILO conventions, including ones protecting collective bargaining rights, equal pay, and forced labor.

Global Capitalism Drives Child Labor

It would be foolhardy to say that ending child labor is simple. To end child labor, we need to end poverty. Meanwhile, global capitalism is built on exploiting workers and extracting profits from farmers, especially Black, brown, and Indigenous peoples. That is true in the U.S. and it is true across the world. To end child labor will require a transformation of the systems that are based on cheap food and exploitation into a world that values the lives and livelihoods of families. Are we up to the challenge?

Chocolate companies continue to make more pledges. Just this week, Hershey announced a new monitoring program to track and address child labor in their supply chains. Yet instead of paying farmers fairly for their cocoa as a first step, they focus on “Diversifying income at the household level and educating families on the value of savings.” It’s insulting to suggest that the reason that farmers who earn just $0.78 per day are poor is because they don’t understand the value of savings. Or that perhaps farmers just need to get another job and “diversify” their income instead of a company that extracted $1.15 billion in profits in 2019 paying fair prices for their cocoa.  Paying farmers fairly is not the only thing needed to end poverty, but to continue to develop and release plans to end poverty without that basic step is more marketing than anything else.

COVID-19 Makes the Problem Worse

COVID-19 has made more clear than ever the ways in which our food system puts profits ahead of peoples’ livelihoods. There are dire warnings that the increase in poverty plus shuttered schools will lead to an increase in child labor around the globe. While the full extent of the consequences is not yet clear, what is clear is that we urgently need to change.

To really end child labor, we need a fair food system that supports fair livelihoods for children and their families. A few action steps for today (and every day).

• Send a message to Hershey’s telling them to put farmer livelihoods ahead of stakeholder profits.
• Look for real fair trade products when you shop. Fair trade seeks to address the root causes of poverty both by setting minimum prices, and by supporting farmer cooperatives addressing the structural power imbalances that cause poverty in the first place.
• Drop Starbucks a line calling out their ongoing problem with forced and child labor.
• Skip the chocolate or coffee with labels like Rainforest Alliance, or company-owned seals that don’t guarantee minimum prices for farmers.
• Skip fast fashion. That cheap t-shirt has a high price for the women and children who make it. Look for fair trade options instead.

¹The as-yet untitled report is authored by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago with funding from the U.S. Department of Labor. The report was leaked to some press and NGOs earlier this spring.

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Last Monday, George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, was killed by a white Minneapolis police officer who put a knee to his neck for over eight minutes as three fellow officers stood by, ignoring Floyd’s pleas for help. A few weeks before that, the story of Ahmaud Arbery got national attention: out for his morning jog, Arbery was shot to death by two white men, a former police officer and his son. Then the story of Breonna Taylor, killed by police barging into her home and shooting her while she slept.  And the story of Tony McCade, a Black transgender man shot by the police in Tallahassee, Florida.

These deaths are just the most recent. There is a long, long history of violence against Black people in the U.S., violence that is now being videoed and replayed so that all people bear witness. These deaths are not an anomaly. Black men are 3 times more likely to be killed by the police than white men Black men are 3 times more likely to be killed by the police than white men.

These deaths are occurring in the midst of a pandemic that has disproportionately impacted communities of color, with Black people again the hardest hit, dying at almost three times the rate of white people. These statistics illustrate the impacts of long-standing, institutionalized racism within our society.

The disproportionate force and militarization of police that we see all over the news right now has for too long been a reality in too many communities across the country. The past few weeks have shown examples of this double standard and how it plays out every day. White demonstrators calling for an end to public health measures such as stay-at-home orders during the pandemic were handled gently by police despite being heavily armed. The power dynamics of white privilege and anti-Blackness play out every day in our communities. Whether or not we see them often depends on our own place on the spectrum of privilege.

Fair World Project stands with all those who call for justice. And we recognize that the problem we collectively face is more than just a few bad apples. Our global food and farming systems are built upon centuries of exploitation of Black labor and Black lives. The ways we grow and trade our food are shaped by centuries of slavery and colonization. We also recognize the skill, knowledge, and experience that Black people have contributed to the ways we grow and prepare food. There can be no food justice, no fair trade without racial justice.

We say Black Lives Matter because our plantation farm system is built on the premise that they don’t. We say Black Lives Matter because our jobs are built upon a minimum wage system that is built on the premise that they don’t. We say Black Lives Matter because our law enforcement acts like they don’t.

We support all those who march and who call for justice for George Floyd, and for all who have been killed and harmed by the systems we live within, systems of white supremacy.

Only when there is justice for those most marginalized can we truly have the just economy and the fair food system we work for every day.

The Movement for Black Lives is calling on us all to make this week, June 1-5, a week of action In Defense of Black Lives. In their words, “This is an opportunity to uplift and fight alongside those turning up in the streets and on the airwaves.”

In solidarity for a more just world,

The Fair World Project Team.

The post No Food Justice without Racial Justice appeared first on Fair World Project.

One concrete step: Support the Real Meals Campaign, calling on Aramark, Sodexo, and Compass Group, to adopt our roadmap for real change in their sourcing, putting close to $1 billion each year into food that is fair, humane, climate-friendly, and grounded in racial justice.

The Big Three: Aramark, Sodexo, and Compass Group

If you’ve ever eaten at a college cafeteria, in baseball stadium, a convention center, a museum, or a hospital, you’ve probably been served a meal by Aramark, Sodexo, or Compass Group (whose subsidiaries include Chartwells and Bon Appetit). These “Big Three” of the food service management industry are some of the biggest companies most people have never heard of. They prepare most of the meals you eat away from home, but not in a place you’d think of as an actual restaurant. And they have the college cafeteria business on lockdown, controlling 83% of the revenue in that sector.[i] Their revenue rivals or exceeds that of McDonalds.

These massive companies have a big role in shaping how our food system works. And right now, they are using that power to prop up some of the biggest food companies in the world whose names are linked to workers’ rights abuses, deforestation, climate change, and human rights violations.

It can be easy to think about this connection between all these Big Food companies and companies like Aramark as a simple problem of supply and demand, perhaps that mythical “invisible hand” of the market guiding similarly large companies together. However, the Be-Trayed report contradicts that narrative. It is not just convenience, but an intricate system that locks these companies into exclusive deals with Big Food corporations. The more they buy, the more they get back in the form of kickbacks. Volume discounts are not a novel idea. But the purchasing system outlined here does not focus on saving money for university clients or student eaters. Its complex matrix of punishments and incentives is all aimed at funneling more profits back to the corporate bottom line.

Corporate Kickbacks: Fundamentally Bad Business

The Be-Trayed report breaks down the kickbacks system into the four features that prop it up:

• The first pillar is exclusivity, requiring or strongly encouraging food service managers at dining halls around the country to buy from 80-100% of their products from “approved” or “preferred” vendor lists.
• To enforce those requirements, companies require “compliance” with those vendor lists—and make that compliance a key element of individual managers’ compensation. In the words of one industry veteran quoted in the report, “The better we did complying with all those policies and procedures, the more we made.” Another manager describes her key incentive for compliance: “I don’t really feel like losing my job.”
• The Be-Trayed report concludes that enforcement is so stringent because these exclusive deals, and the resulting kickbacks are baked into the Big Three companies’ business model. The scale of the issue: It is estimated that kickbacks or rebates account for 40-50% of these companies’ net profits in North America.
• That estimate of profits remains an estimate, however. And that is because of the final pillar of the kickbacks system: secrecy. In the words of one worker quoted in the report, there is “Absolutely no transparency” in the system. And the trail of fired whistleblowers and former managers and workers who fear retaliation if they speak out backs this claim.

Food Service Management companies have been sued over these practices before. Testimony from one of the former New York State Assistant Attorney General who prosecuted one such case described kickbacks as “fundamentally bad business.” He went on to explain that “In my opinion, rebates create an inherent conflict of interest. Decision makers are more likely to make food choices based on maximizing rebate income rather than other important factors.”

Big Food: Bad for People and the Planet

While Aramark, Sodexo, and Compass Group may not be household names, the Big Food companies they work with are. Indeed, some of the biggest have been in the headlines recently. Smithfield Foods, where a workers’ group has sued over lack of protections as COVID-19 swept through pig processing plants. Tyson, whose chicken processing plants have a long history of mistreating workers, from degrading accounts of line speeds so fast workers are unable to take bathroom breaks to dangerous conditions in the current pandemic. JBS, a massive meat multinational selling under Pilgrim’s Pride and other brands, whose Brazilian operations are linked to the fires that spread through the Amazon rainforest last year.  Cargill, the commodity trader whose name never appears on household products, but whose supply chains funnel cocoa, soy, and palm oil into industrial food chains. And leave child labor, deforestation, and poverty in the communities where they work from Indonesia to Brazil to Cote d’Ivoire.

Dubbed “the Worst Company in the World” in 2019, Cargill has recently been back in headlines for increasing child labor in their cocoa supply chains.

These Big Food companies are notorious for their contributions to human rights violations, workers’ rights abuses, and the climate crisis. And these are the companies who prop up the kickbacks model. It’s a model with just a few winners, executives and shareholders who profit, and a whole lot of losers—all of us who want good food, decent jobs, and a habitable planet.

Real Meals, Real Solutions

The Be-Trayed report delves deep into the details of how kickbacks cost university clients, vendors, and students money—and looks beyond the nitty-gritty line items. The report concludes: “The impacts of an increasingly privatized and kickback-driven supply chain may be invisibilized, but they are severe for so many communities, from Indigenous peoples of the Amazon to Black farmers in North Carolina, from processing plant workers in Arkansas to cattle ranchers in Colorado, from students in the food line to cafeteria workers on the frontline.”

But it does not have to be this way. While corporate kickbacks lock in supply chains of destruction, those student meal plan dollars could be investing in another food system entirely.

That’s why we’re part of the coalition calling on Aramark, Sodexo, and Compass Group for #RealMealsNow.

That roadmap for real change includes:

• Phase out the kickback system that reinforces the power of Big Food corporations and harms communities.
• Give market access to community-based farms and food businesses by reaching a target of at least 25% Real Food sourcing in every higher education account.
• Invest in racial justice and equity by expanding purchasing from Black farmers and other disenfranchised producers and by investing in infrastructure to support their market access.
• Reduce both their carbon emissions and their purchases of factory-farmed animal products by 25 percent and replace them with Real Food alternatives.

These steps add up to a goal of investing close to $1 billion per year to work for our communities.

While it sounds like a big number, Real Food Generation, the authors of the report, have been working on university campuses for years. The success stories scattered throughout the report show what’s possible. One example tells of students at the University of Vermont dumping Dole and Chiquita’s bananas and human rights abuse records to support small-scale farmer-grown bananas from Equal Exchange. Let’s build more of that.

Get Involved: Real Meals Now!

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the ways that the current industrial food system is failing eaters, workers, and farmers alike. As more people look for ways to make change, here are a few things you can do today:

• Check out the Be-Trayed report for specific recommendations for students, farmers, ranchers, fishers, journalists, activists, shareholders, and public officials.
• Sign on to the Real Meals Campaign petition.
• Watch and share this video where Phillip and Dorathy Barker talk about their 40 years in the dairy business and the impacts of Big Food.
• Support food workers’ urgent calls for workplace protections during the global pandemic.

[i] Aramark, Sodexo, and Compass Group control 83% of all revenue earned by the top 50 contracted food service companies in the U.S. in 2015, according to the Be-Trayed report.

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Coronavirus has pulled back the curtain on many of the worst contradictions in our food system. Since March, headlines have been non-stop about food waste, inefficient supply chains, and empty grocery shelves. Food workers face daily exposure to COVID-19 and are risking their lives for their jobs. The epicenter of both these food system woes and skyrocketing infection rates is our highly consolidated meat industry, particularly the Tyson, JBS, Smithfield and Cargill monopolies in beef, pork and poultry. Meatpacking workers are getting sick by the thousands.  It is time for the regulators tasked with protecting their health to issue clear, mandatory guidance for workers on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic.

TAKE ACTION

The meat and poultry industry has experienced massive consolidation in the last 40 years, while relocating production facilities in rural areas out of the public eye. These processing facilities are massive, employing thousands of people on a daily basis and processing millions of animal per year. Working conditions are abysmal and safety enforcement is lax, according to Human Rights Watch, with chronic illness and serious injury the norm among workers. Processing lines run at breakneck speeds to turn dead carcasses into consumer-friendly portions, resulting in repetitive motion injuries for many workers. Restrictive personnel policies don’t allow adequate bathroom breaks, and cavalier approaches to CDC and OSHA guidelines do little to protect worker health and safety. Nearly two-thirds of meat and poultry plant workers are immigrants and people of color, with many refugees and formerly incarcerated individuals as well. After decades of corporate consolidation and relocation to rural areas, meat industry wages have plummeted, with current wages averaging $14 per hour, a drop of 50% since the 1970’s. Workers rarely have paid sick leave and benefits are minimal, and many of them can only afford to live in substandard housing with many roommates and family members. Upton Sinclair, who wrote “The Jungle” over one hundred years ago would recognize this new normal in the meat industry: find the most vulnerable people in society, give them the most dangerous jobs at the lowest pay, and rake in the profits off of their misery. Meatpacking was already a dangerous job. Then Coronavirus hit.

The pandemic has had a horrifying and tragic impact on meat plant workers. According to data collected by FERN, over 204 meatpacking and processed food plants have confirmed cases of COVID-19, as of May 12th. Over 14,600 workers have become ill, and close to 60 have died. The rural communities that host meatpacking plants are now nationally significant coronavirus hotspots, outpacing densely-packed cities for infection rates.

Against this backdrop, the chairman of Tyson Foods, John Tyson, took out a full page ad in the New York Times in late April to warn the public that “the food supply is breaking.” Tyson warned of food shortages in grocery stores and huge food waste on farms, with millions of animals being euthanized and composted. Tyson Foods is no stranger to the halls of power and their self-serving attempt at a public service announcement found the right audience. Within 24 hours, President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order invoking the Defense Production Act to compel meat plants to remain open, while avoiding liability for the deaths and illnesses to come, as long as they follow weakly enforced guidelines from CDC and OSHA. Since this announcement, confirmed COVID-19 cases jumped 40% in counties with beef and pork packing plants, compared to a 19% rise nationally during that time period.

The uproar that followed Trump’s Order has brought the plight of meat plant workers into the light of day. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka blasted the decision, pointing out that, while the President has been slow to act to ensure the production of life-saving protective equipment, he has stepped up quickly, “favoring executives over working people, and the stock market over human lives. He is forcing workers to choose between a paycheck and their health.”

Stuart Applebaum, head of RWDSU (Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union), which represents thousands of meat plant workers in the Southeast, summed up the situation, saying “It’s the wrong decision because the best way to protect the food chain is to protect the safety of the workers.”

Organizers from Venceremos, an Arkansas-based group organizing poultry workers, have launched an online campaign to support the 30,000 Tyson workers in Arkansas. They are demanding that Tyson provide paid sick leave for workers who need to be quarantined, as well as hazard pay for working on the processing line during a pandemic. Rural Community Workers Alliance (RWCA) has filed a lawsuit against Smithfield in order to force the company to protect worker health and safety. And LULAC, a Latino civil rights group, called for a Meatless May, a boycott of chicken, beef and pork, calling on communities to stand with meat plant workers for safer conditions.

The United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), the union for over one hundred thousand meatpacking workers nationwide, has issued five demands for meat conglomerates to protect their employees from sickness: prioritize testing for essential workers, ensure access to personal protective equipment (PPE), reduce line speeds, mandate social distancing in plants, and allow infected workers to quarantine at home with pay.

The HEAL Food Alliance (Health, Environment, Agriculture, Labor) and Food Chain Workers Alliance have penned an open letter to the Department of Labor and Congress. This letter echoes the themes raised by the frontline food workers who make up much of their membership and calls for urgent, mandatory regulatory action to protect them.  Specifically, they call for:

1. OSHA to issue and enforce an Emergency Temporary Standard to protect food workers and all essential workers from COVID-19.
2. Congress to immediately pass legislation to:
   • Compel OSHA to issue an enforceable Emergency Temporary Standard—as is laid out inR. 6559—and provide OSHA with commensurate funds to implement this mandate.
   • Mandate employers to provide premium pay at a minimum of time and half to all workers given the increasingly hazardous, deadly conditions.

As the organizers from HEAL note, “food workers are not disposable.” It is clear that the meat industry is not going to police themselves, and voluntary standards leave workers vulnerable. Take action now to support frontline workers’ calls for clear rules to protect them in the workplace—and keep more communities from getting sick.

TAKE ACTION

Photo Credits: United States government work
Senator Chris Coons – Tour of Mountaire Poultry Processing Plant – March 2011
National Chicken Council – Poultry workers cut and trim chickens before they are packaged. US Government Accountability Office / Flickr (CC0)

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